Starlight, Hellfire
by Mia Sereno
Summary: Kenshin rescues a young girl from an assassin and finds himself wondering about the story behind her mysterious lavender eyes. Fantasy/mystery.
1. Default Chapter Title

Author's note: (this author's note written at the same time as Part 3 ::blush::) I have no idea why I started this fic. Maybe because I'd been immersing myself in darkfics and fantasy before thinking this fic up. Too much of something can do strange things to one's brain. Ehehehe...  
Now that I think about it the plot for the overall fic has a lot of gaping holes in it. But hey, SH *is* my first fic. Parts 1 and 2 have just been rewritten over, and over again, that's all. ^^  
The author'd appreciate it if you e-mailed her at sumire@rurouni.com with your comments, criticisms, questions, and suggestions. Flames will be speedily extinguished by her water elemental friend Ia. ^^  
Should you need it, a glossary of Japanese terms and names is at the end. Standard disclaimers apply.  
  
Written November, December 1999  
  
* * for emphasis, [ ] for mindspeech, ( ) for thoughts  
  
Starlight, Hellfire  
Part 1: What Brings the Wind  
by Mia Sereno  
  
Kaze [Wind]:  
.......Endless whispering,.........  
Unseen passage, a soft touch:  
.......Thus comes the wind.......  
  
The sun was setting.  
  
Kenshin stood contemplating its fiery beauty for a time as he stood by a gnarled tree near the dojo grounds, watching the golden crocus that was the sun fold its petals and sink deep into the horizon. The sun's dying rays shone full on his face, outlining his delicate features in gold and tinting his eyes with amber.  
  
It had been years since he had stood like that, on a hill with the sunset before him, golden eyes watching its splendor. But then, years ago, he had watched the sun with no more than a killer's indifference for beauty and the hunter's need to know time, and the gold in his eyes then was not just a reflection of the sun's rays but a mirror of the person he was. A mirror of the killer he was then.  
  
He closed his eyes momentarily, remembering the suffering, the anguish, the screams, reliving once again the tangy smell of blood in the air and the blackness of death that was his world more than a decade ago and the stuff of his nightmares even until now. The mark of pain and guilt, patiently endured, was clearly written in the somber expression of his violet eyes. They were eyes that were far too old for a young man, far too wise for one who had lived for but twenty-eight years in the world.  
  
A breeze whispered past, ruffling the rurouni's hair like streaming red silk, causing the swaying trees to sigh their age-old song of sorrow and mourn over the tragedy a man could make of his life by refusing forgiveness when it was what he needed most.  
  
The spell the murmuring of the trees among themselves cast was broken by a shrill scream that shattered the tranquility of the moment and caused Kenshin to look up from his reverie with trouble in his eyes. Instinctively, his hand reached for his sakabatou in a swift gesture honed to perfection by years of use.  
  
Seconds later, he was gone from the old tree's side, with the wind sighing in his wake.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
A young woman ran along the riverbank, her hair flying behind her like a living thing lashing around her shoulders in fear. Despite the restriction of the travel-stained kimono she wore, she ran quickly, as one who has been running all her life and has been borne on the wings of fear all that time. She staggered on, her breath hoarse and burning in her throat. Her footfalls sounded very loud to her ears, thudding rhythmic patterns in the green turf by the river.  
  
[Do not let them find me now. Do not let them take me now...]  
  
A shadowed form dropped in front of her, and she instinctively recoiled, bewilderment and disbelief clearly written across her face. The stranger straightened, then flicked a hand inside the darkness of his robes and drew a katana, inwardly amused by the angry, disbelieving protest in the girl's mind and the supreme effort it took for her to keep from lashing out at him.  
  
The girl struggled to form the words, the incoherence of fear threatening her speech. "Who are you?"  
  
"The bringer of your death." The katana's blade caught the dying sun's rays, shining with the cold intensity of killing steel, and it seemed to the young woman that it was covered with blood. She shivered despite herself, struggling to keep the movement unseen. Fear at this time would only increase, would only hasten, the danger, the bloodshed.  
  
Still, she shuddered even though she did not want to show it. It was an almost imperceptible movement, made even more so because there was strength behind her apparent frailty, steel concealed behind the petals of the flower. However, the assassin noted it, and smiled cruelly.  
  
The girl's eyes narrowed, strangely, as the assassin approached her with deliberately slow steps meant to prolong her dread and tension. Her hand flicked to her obi and to the small dagger concealed there, clutching it as her only link to life and hope of surviving.  
  
However, she could not stop a short scream that escaped her suddenly pale lips as the assassin blurred towards her, katana glinting in the rays of the sun with its unforgiving steel that thirsted for her blood.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
Kenshin arrived by the river several moments later. His eyes narrowed, then widened, as they pierced the obscuring curtain of distance to make out the figures of the black-robed assassin and the young woman. Even at the great distance that separated them he could feel the tension in the air, the young woman's fear and her panic as she fell to the ground and the assassin raised his katana. Kenshin recognized the move, and with the memories of a killer, knew how it worked: swift, fatal... if he did not reach the girl she would be dead in the space of a few seconds.  
  
He tensed, his muscles taut, then streaked forward with all of his legendary speed, desperately trying to reach her in time.  
  
Surprisingly, he did not need to.  
  
Just as the katana's blade was about to pierce the young woman's throat and as Kenshin was runnning towards her with all of his speed, the young woman rolled away and came to her feet in one swift, graceful movement, the slit in the faded silk of her kimono the only mark of the katana's strike.  
  
Kenshin felt an inward jolt of surprise as the girl faced the assassin again, the air around her no longer filled with fear but with diamond-hard determination as she dodged the assassin's attack once again and, with a tightly controlled movement, brought the dagger in her hand sweeping across the assassin's side, drawing blood. The girl and her attacker drew apart again, facing each other.  
  
He was hidden only several meters from them, waiting to make his move, not wanting to distract the girl or interfere with her concentration, when the girl's large lavender eyes flickered suddenly to him as if she had known he was there. The dark pupils dilated, then contracted in recognition and terror of a new and greater threat. Kenshin felt a strange blow against his mind.  
  
[You!]  
  
Then suddenly an image washed over his consciousness... darkness, and eyes... frightened eyes, wide and open in horror... then a dark reflection of himself in them, a reflection taken from a past he had long tried to forget. Kenshin tried to shake himself free, but still the gaze of the eyes followed him, held him in place by the power of his guilt.  
  
And as he shook himself free of the images he saw the girl staring at him with her strange, mesmerizing lavender eyes he had seen in his dreams so many years before, accusing, uncomprehending. Kenshin tried to take a step forward, and couldn't, not even as the assassin cut the girl across the back as she twisted away one second too late, even as the girl fell to the ground with her lavender gaze from a dark and unclear past still fixed on him as he watched, held in stasis.  
  
[No... not you...]  
  
Then a wave of sudden pain as blood darkened the girl's kimono.  
  
The Hitokiri inside him stirred, golden coils awakening in a hiss of angry fire, bursting free of the bonds the girl's strangely familiar eyes had trapped him in and streaking towards the crumpled form on the ground as the assassin raised his katana to plunge it into the bloodied blue silk of the young woman's kimono.  
  
The katana's blade met only grassy turf. Kenshin, his eyes now deepening into violet and with the young woman in his arms, heard the cry of bitter despair that escaped the assassin's lips as the katana missed its target.  
  
He looked back a split-second later. The assassin was gone.  
  
Kenshin frowned, thinking back to several months, almost a year, ago, when he had first saved Kaoru from Gohei. In some ways, it was like his first meeting with Kaoru, this strange encounter, yet now the girl had not escaped relatively unscathed -- Kaoru's was only a small wound -- and the assassin had disappeared. Disappeared soundlessly, leaving no trace but blood, as always the mark of the assassin.  
  
(Such was I, once..) He set the girl down on the grass, taking care not to touch her wound. Even though he could not see her eyes, shadowed over as they were by the long, dark, hair that escaped its pins and fell in a veil over her face, he could feel her confusion and fear.  
  
(Why?)  
  
He shook his head to clear it of the thoughts that had clouded it since he had first seen the young woman. Even as he first saw her he had felt a tug at his consciousness, a link to his past, in the depths of her lavender eyes. And now her strange attitude towards him, the air of mystery and of fear around her, the assassin that had wounded her... these questions crowded at the back of his mind, begging for answers.  
  
Dismissing those thoughts with a flick of his red hair, he started towards Dr. Takani Megumi's clinic, carrying the unconscious girl.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
Megumi frowned as she probed her patient's wound.  
  
"Is there something wrong, Megumi-dono?" Kenshin's voice was concerned and tight with worry. He had seated himself at the farthest corner of the room, not so much as to watch the doctor and her patient, but to protect them from what harm had been hovering at the very edges of his vision, unrealized and unseen but with its dark warning still there. To Megumi's eyes something had been troubling him, for since he came in with the girl his eyes had been more shadowed than usual.  
  
Megumi looked up from her examination of the girl, clearly baffled. "Nothing much, Ken-san... it's just that the wound won't clot easily. It's a good thing you brought her to me or..." Her voice trailed off, leaving the rest of the sentence unsaid but clear in the somber light of her brown eyes. She turned back to her patient, drawing needle and thread from a box on a table. "This might hurt," she warned as she waved Kenshin to an adjoining room and, drawing the kimono the girl was wearing down, cleaned her patient's back in preparation for stitching.  
  
The girl nodded, her lavender eyes alive with pain and her lips white. She held something tightly clutched in her right hand, as if she was holding it for support, and as Megumi finished the stitching of the wound she saw, through the pale fingers that loosened around it, that it was a four-pointed star carved from a single diamond, rainbow fire burning in its heart.  
  
Megumi stopped, eyes keenly observing every detail of the girl's embroidered... now faded dress, her manner, the star. (Who *is* this girl? It's not likely that anyone would want to kill her, as Ken-san said... and if she belongs to a high-ranking family, she would have been kidnapped or taken as a hostage... not killed.  
  
It is strange.  
  
Stranger, because she is no ordinary person. Those eyes...  
  
Those eyes, and why anyone would seek her death...)  
  
Shaking herself free of those curious thoughts, she applied a bandage to the wound. "Finished." Relief was evident in her voice, and also strain. The wound had not been easy to stitch.  
  
"Domo arigatou, Takani-san," the girl said, smiling slightly despite the pain of her now-bandaged wound. This was the first time she had spoken. Her voice was soft, clear but with barely-concealed sadness below its surface, and Megumi felt an answering chord of pity in herself, as if she had seen a spirit's kindred sorrow. Kindred sorrow in a stranger, no less, with many things unknown about her... for instance, her name. Kenshin had introduced her to Megumi, but strangely -- or perhaps not -- he had not mentioned the girl's name. Perhaps he himself didn't know it.  
  
Or knew, but didn't want to know and so pushed the knowledge into the realm of ignorance? The thought, almost as soon as it appeared in her mind, was dismissed for later, when she had time to herself. For later. There would be time for reflection... later.  
  
Megumi nodded her acknowledgement as she took one of her older cotton kimonos out of a drawer. "Here," she said, handing the girl the kimono, "I hope this will fit you. Your kimono was... stained and ripped beyond repair."  
  
"Domo arigatou gozaimasu."  
  
"You are welcome, ...?"  
  
The girl seemed to sense the question in Megumi's voice. "Hoshino," she said, inclining her head. "Hoshino Mikomi."  
  
"...Mikomi-san... and please, just call me Megumi."  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
Kenshin, who had been looking out the window and listening at the same time, shivered imperceptibly upon hearing the girl's name. (Hoshino? The girl's surname sounds familiar... where have I heard it before?)  
  
(And where is her family?) Again an image flashed before him, called up from the regions of his mind and memory he never knew existed... darkness, and blood, and the sense of an unwanted alien presence. A momentary surge of anger and pity... and strangely, regret... welled up inside him. (Dead...?)  
  
(I don't know her... But it's like I always have, only I've forgotten?...)  
  
The unspoken questions in her lavender eyes replayed amongst the other shadows of his thought. Her bewilderment on his saving her, the question... [Why?] And then the strange gleam of recognition in her eyes, the unspoken [You!] and the blow against his mind.  
  
The finely-honed danger sense, like the warning of cold wind before the storm, spoke softly in his mind, awakening old memories. Stirring the shadow into reality.  
  
The shadow... becoming reality? He had never even thought of it for almost a decade... had forgotten the supernatural evil that was not of the Hitokiri's all too human killings but of something else, older and far more powerful. It had once haunted him, then never again. Horror at the ancient fear that resided deep inside him for years flashed through his mind, haunting him as the girl's lavender eyes had.  
  
No.  
  
The shadow would stay in the realm of illusion. Never reality.  
  
He hoped.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
Soon Kenshin silently walked over to Megumi and spoke quietly with her, taking his leave as always politely but without being able to hide the trouble in his voice. Other people might have been deceived by the mask of the innocent rurouni he wore, but to Megumi the mask had slipped, showing the deep, serious Kenshin that was neither rurouni or hitokiri.  
  
She wondered what might have brought this about.  
  
Mikomi?  
  
The girl's eyes tugged at her, alive with memories, drawing her deep into the shadows of unrealized thought. Megumi subconsciously shook free of the girl's gaze and closed her own brown eyes, trying to see what they could not.  
  
Megumi's eyes saw... nothing except the ordinary.  
  
No, this was not right. Ever since she had seen the girl... her eyes... she had felt the first tendrils of uneasiness uncoiling deep inside her, and deny it as she might, she could still feel the cold foreboding in her. The lavender depths of Mikomi's eyes awakened in her fear of the known and the mystery of her past. Fear of their uncanny reflection of Kenshin's eyes...  
  
They were not an exact reflection of the violet; instead, lavender, a fainter shade, as if in the staining of violet had been incomplete. Or somehow interrupted and left undone. Megumi opened her own eyes and stole a glance at Mikomi, whose face was shadowed once again with whatever unreadable thoughts were in her mind.  
  
Those eyes... The *expression* of sorrow in those eyes was almost the duplicate of Kenshin's eyes when he was brooding over his own thoughts. Megumi suppressed a shudder that somehow went against all the solid common sense she had been trained for. (Be honest with yourself, Megumi. How many violet or lavender eyes do you expect to see in a lifetime? And with these eyes having met so strangely, how can you be sure that this was pure chance, as you have been trying to make yourself believe ever since you saw the girl?)  
  
Megumi shook her head, dark hair veiling her face from Mikomi. (No... I see now.... this is not chance. This is but some trick of fate...)  
  
She looked up and at the mysterious eyes that hid in them both mystery and the forewarning... eyes that were full of light, and still shadowed by knowledge of a deeper darkness.  
  
(She looks as if she had just passed through another world.)  
  
Realization chilled her. (Another world...) Then, with the split-second swiftness she had always known, she made a decision.  
  
The hairs at the back of Megumi's neck prickled as she plumbed the depth of those lavender eyes, deeper, deeper, searching for the answer to the mystery and the truth of the coming darkness. Deeper into herself and into the lavender mirror that was the girl... testing the strangeness she had felt ever since she had fully seen the gaze of those eyes.  
  
Until suddenly, with the relief of the weight pressing down on the back of her mind, Megumi rose from the depths of memories and thoughts not her own as a pearl diver rises from the ocean, with the pearl of future's insight grasped tightly in her palm.  
  
She had seen darkness... a great swarm of all the evils she had seen in her life and those that lived only in the depths of man's tortured soul. In this darkness, this manifestation of evil, she had seen great power that, eerily, was something that stemmed from man's perception of evil and of the supernatural... demons, shadows, and creatures that fed on agony and blood.  
  
And this darkness was overshadowing Mikomi, hunting her and hating her with all the hatred its evil was capable of. Megumi could feel the overpowering fear that haunted the girl and tainted her every thought with cold.  
  
Strangely she could also see Kenshin in the shadow of this darkness. But he who stood there, in Mikomi's thoughts, was not the rurouni, not the hitokiri, not even the man... only a soulless instrument the evil weilded.  
  
She shuddered and tried to forget... to disbelieve. Yet she could not stop the thoughts that came crowding into her bewildered mind.  
  
This was not some trick of fate.  
  
No trick at all!  
  
Instead, warning. True, merciful -- for she knew that if it had not come they would have been overcome by that darkness -- warning that would be the lull before the supernatural storm.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
"Where *is* Kenshin?" Kaoru asked no one in particular, her voice wavering. It was already evening, and the stars were shining their guardian lights against the darkening curtain of sky. Kenshin had disappeared hours ago, at sunset, without a trace, leaving no sign of where he went. She had worried so much since then, torturing herself by imagining countless possibilities behind which loomed the specter of an old fear... the fear that finally, he had gone, never to return.  
  
(No, no... please... you promised.)  
  
Footsteps behind her caused her to turn, hoping, and to see Kenshin trudging towards the dojo, his face weary and troubled, his gi stained with blood Kaoru hoped was not his own. She found herself running towards him, the worry and fear in her heart erased and replaced by the fulfilled hope and joy of welcome.  
  
"Kenshin!" There was a world of questions in her eyes, and then she noticed the blood on his gi and looked up at him with distress shadowing the pools of clear blue as she clutched the bloodstained gi.  
  
Kenshin gently took the hand clutching his gi into his own. "Daijoubu, Kaoru-dono... I'm all right."  
  
"...Where have you been?" She tried to keep the overwhelming concern from her voice, and could not. "You should have said where you were going! I... worried so much about you!" Kaoru's relief almost spilled over into tears.  
  
"Gomen nasai, Kaoru-dono, you shouldn't have worried about me."  
  
Kaoru smiled, almost tearfully. The gentle touch of the hand holding hers, somewhat hesitantly, as if Kenshin were afraid to touch something infinitely delicate and precious -- was painful, his never-ending non-acceptance in perceived unworthiness of her and of her worry tearing at her. (If you don't think yourself worthy of my worry, how, then, will you accept what I want to give you? Happiness... forgiveness... love?  
  
But still it's all right... always all right... as long as you come back...) "It's okay, Kenshin. Come on inside, and you can tell me about it."  
  
"Hai."  
  
They walked the few steps to the dojo in silence.  
  
As Kenshin stepped inside the dojo, Kaoru's hand still held gently in his own, he heard the wind whisper in his ear, calling back bitter, hate-filled memories, bringing with it the chilling feeling that he was being watched. Almost instinctively Kenshin turned, shielding Kaoru with his body, but the wind was gone, leaving only the memory of its presence and the premonition of unseen evil.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Tsuzuku!  
  
Some follow-up notes for this first part (after all, it *is* the first part ^^):  
  
I don't know why Rurouni Kenshin, at least for me, lends itself so... easily... to the supernatural. Maybe this is because of who Kenshin was and is, the darker side of him that has never been fully revealed. Or maybe because I've been reading too many fantasy series ^_^  
About my writing, well... I know I need a lot more polish and a good proofreader/draft reader... plus a good dictionary of Japanese words and some research as to some of Japan's history and culture, but I hope that it wasn't as... as... not-written-but-scribbled-on-a-tissue as the unrevised version written a long, long time ago (aka the first one I ever posted).  
For those who have read the previous revised version, I've changed a few things... and added some. Megumi's thoughts, for one (at the suggestion of a kind person who did not flame me for that excuse for a fic...)  
Oh... about Megumi's thoughts... well, I thought she'd be insightful enough to be able to see what was hidden, and I've always held the opinion that if there should be someone blessed with the gift of supernatural foresight, it should be her -- she's gone through enough to be able to sense that, and with what gift she has, at least in this fic... while Kenshin has enough "danger sense" to warn him. So basically what happens is that they both feel warned about something, and they know it's evil, but they don't know what it is. Thought it'd be better to set the tone for part 2.  
  
Glossary:  
daijoubu = I'm all right; when it's a question as in "Daijoubu?" = are you all right?  
domo arigatou (gozaimasu) = thank you, polite; with the gozaimasu/domo both = very polite form  
-dono = very formal form of Ms, Mr. Very Kenshin-esque ^^  
gomen nasai = I'm very sorry  
hai = yes  
Hoshino = 'Hoshi' being 'star', and 'no' being 's (apostrophe-'s'), this surname means 'first name' of the stars  
Mikomi = promise, in the context of hope; therefore 'Hoshino Mikomi' is Promise of the Stars  
-san = normal form of address, connotes the normal respect for the addressee  
tsuzuku = to be continued ^_~ 


	2. Default Chapter Title

A partly insane little girl's rants, raves and comments that will have to pass for an author's note: This is my -- what? third? fourth? -- nth revision of part 2... ::sigh:: I have no idea why I have to keep changing, correcting, and modifying my RK fics when I'm perfectly satisfied with the others. *stops short before she goes into a rant*  
Forgive the disjointed sentences and paragraphs, the typos, and the grammar. English is *not* my first language, and I was puzzling over the structure of Japanese verbs while I wrote the latter parts (...and there are chunks here several months older than the others! orooo...).  
More introspection (? is that the right word for it?) here, though no first-person bits. I *can't* write in first person; Winter Sun, from Tomoe's pov, was a fluke. Thanks to everyone who answered my questions about silly little stuff I *will* be using in future parts.  
Comments, criticisms, suggestions, questions, and donations ^_~ welcome at sumire@rurouni.com. There's also a glossary thingy at the end, if you need it for the Japanese terms, though entries in the glossary for the previous part won't be included. Standard disclaimers apply.  
  
Written January 2000 and May 2000  
  
* * for emphasis, ( ) for thoughts, [ ] for mindspeech, -- -- for... uh... how do I say this? audible thoughts? ^^;  
  
Preceding part(s):  
Part 1: What Brings the Wind  
  
Starlight, Hellfire  
Part 2: Shadowed Secrets  
by Mia Sereno  
  
Kage [Shadow]:  
......What is a shadow?.......  
...Reflection of darkness...  
.......Following a form........  
  
"Itadakimasu!"  
  
Kaoru smiled, a little ruefully, as Yahiko and Sanosuke dove into the food before them with a gusto that seemed more fitting to a pair of beggars who had not eaten for several weeks than to the reasonably well-fed people they were. As she ate the food Kenshin had prepared, she reflected, even more ruefully, that she was a hopeless failure in the kitchen. But then she pushed those thoughts out of her mind and focused her attention on dinner.  
  
After a while -- perhaps because he was eating too much too quickly, or had tried to swallow a whole onigiri in one gulp -- Sanosuke began to choke. Kaoru looked at his rapidly reddening face with more than just a little satisfaction. "Serves you right for being such a pig, Sano," commented she.  
  
Megumi, who was staying there that night, made a face and pounded on Sano's back until the spasm had passed. "For once the tanuki's right, roosterhead," she said as Sano, gasping, gulped down some water. "You *are* a pig." Looking slyly at Kaoru then at Kenshin, she added, "It's a good thing *you* aren't, ne Ken-san?" Somehow the doctor had contrived to sidle up to Kenshin as she said those words and was now laying a flirtatious hand on the rurouni's arm.  
  
A hand pulled the indignant Kaoru back as a pair of lavender eyes looked warningly at Megumi. "Maa, maa," Mikomi said, "could you two at least let the rest of us eat dinner in peace?" She looked thoughtfully at Sanosuke. "But Sano," she continued, an impish twinkle in her eyes, "you *do* know that you *are* a pig?"  
  
Almost two months had passed since they had first met Mikomi. When Kaoru had met the girl and learned about her 'transient state' she had invited Mikomi to stay in the dojo. Mikomi being a sensible girl who was not at all romantically interested in Kenshin, she and Kaoru had become friends within a few days. The others had also accepted her, as a friend and -- something Kenshin, Megumi, and she herself were all thankful for, though for different reasons -- unquestioningly.  
  
This was not to say that all was peace and harmony when Mikomi settled into their lives. Sanosuke and Yahiko had their views of her as the 'demure, quiet lady' shattered when they found that Mikomi was the possessor of a wit as biting as Megumi's sarcasm and a willingness to use it that matched Kaoru's enthusiasm. Though she didn't tease Sano as Megumi was wont to, she could irritate him almost equally with her disconcerting look that seemed to say she was secretly laughing at him. Yahiko found in her another 'older sister', one who -- unfortunately for him -- unfailingly took Kaoru's side in every argument.  
  
One could say that Mikomi had settled into their lives as well as anyone might be expected to. Indeed, the only thing strange about Mikomi was how she acted toward Kenshin.  
  
When Kaoru had invited Mikomi to stay in the dojo, Kenshin thought he caught dread flicker for a split-second in the girl's lavender eyes before she had accepted. With the insight of one whose eyes saw far more than he was thought to, he knew that what inspired that fear had something to do with him.  
  
But why?  
  
The weeks that followed never gave him the reason. Mikomi was kind to him, certainly, but she was never as close to him as she was to Kaoru or Megumi, or even Yahiko and Sanosuke. Somehow she always maintained a painful distance that was hidden beneath exquisitely subtle layers of politeness and pleasant deference.  
  
Occasionally he would see her, when she thought she was alone, stroking a hollow of her throat and biting her lips to hold back choking sobs. Other times when he came quietly in the room her eyes would widen and the lavender pale in a sudden flash of fear that was gone as soon as it came. Mikomi would never say anything to him, but...  
  
"Mou! Yahiko!"  
  
"You give that back to Mikomi-chan, right now!"  
  
A deep-throated chuckle. "Yeah Yahiko, why steal Mikomi's food when you can take Kenshin's?" As if to prove his point, Sano reached to snag some of Kenshin's food but was brought up short when he was sharply rapped across the knuckles. "Oi!"  
  
"Shame on you, roosterhead," Megumi said reprovingly. "If you have to have more, why not take Kaoru's, and not the poor dear's. I've noticed that tanuki-chan has been getting heavier, anyway."  
  
Mikomi hid a smile at Kaoru's and Kenshin's expressions, gathered the bowls, cups, and chopsticks, and stood up. "Would you like to help in washing the dishes, Megumi-san?" she asked as she headed to the kitchen.  
  
Megumi hurriedly rose and followed her.  
~*~*~*~*~*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
Somehow, as Megumi and Mikomi were occupied in the kitchen, Sanosuke and Yahiko wandered off and left Kenshin and Kaoru alone in the central room.  
  
There were a few moments of silence. Kaoru quietly watched Kenshin as his violet gaze settled onto the night-darkened garden and was lost in the shadows. Then, maybe because she couldn't think of anything to say, she too looked out into the night.  
  
The clouds around the moon drew back. Moonlight now silvered the garden, lighting the leaves and blades of grass with pale fire and calling the shadows of night into life. In the light of the moon the night seemed somehow frozen, imbued with all the pure coldness of virgin snow, etched in a moment of emotionless perfection.  
  
Then, because they couldn't think of anything else to say to each other, they talked of commonplace things while each wished with all his or her heart that the other would... say... what he or she really felt... and talk of something else that had more to do with "us" and "you" than with "it", or even "them".  
  
"Will you be going to market tomorrow?" asked Kaoru.  
  
"Aa... we're running low on vegetables and tofu," Kenshin answered. He smiled the rurouni's smile. "Would you like to come along, Kaoru-dono?"  
  
Kaoru grimaced. "I'd just be tempted to buy that kimono I saw when Mikomi-chan and I were shopping for her clothes. Go on without me."  
  
Kenshin smiled again, nodded slightly, and gazed at the starless, moonlit sky. "Beautiful night," he murmured.  
  
"Yes..." Kaoru looked up at the moon and sighed, then turned again to Kenshin. Whatever she was about to say was forgotten when a glowing firefly alighted on her hand. "Look!" She turned wide blue eyes to the tiny pinpoints of light that came alive and danced like golden stars throughout the garden, shattering the motionlessness of the night and replacing it with sparkling movement.  
  
Perhaps because of the memories the fireflies stirred, it took Kenshin a long while to reply. When he did open his mouth to speak Kaoru was already in the garden, laughing as she played, like a child, with the fireflies. The way she could so effortlessly combine carefree beauty and artless innocence tugged at his heart and took the sting from the memory of farewell, and he started to laugh as well, very softly.  
  
A shadow passed over the moon.  
  
Glancing at Kenshin out of the corner of her eyes, Kaoru saw a smile curve his lips and the light of laughter appear in his eyes. The next moment the laugh died on his lips as the shadow blotted out the moon's light.  
  
In that peculiar, sudden darkness Kenshin was changed... soulless, somehow, and Kaoru had the sudden feeling that all that really *was* Kenshin had been eclipsed by an overpowering evil. Even his eyes -- which only a moment before were violet with emotion shining in their depths -- darkened and the pupils drowned out by the now cold-blooded irises.  
  
Unconsciously, Kaoru took a step backward, her eyes never leaving his form. She could feel an evil in him, a darkness that was radiating from him and withering her spirit. A bewildered voice in her mind asked what had happened to the real Kenshin, the one she knew.  
  
"Kenshin!" she gasped.  
  
The shadow swirled around the luminous orb that was the moon, then wavered and was gone.  
  
As the darkness lifted and was replaced by the cold radiance of the moon, humanity and emotion rushed back, as air rushes to fill a vacuum, into Kenshin's face. "Kaoru-dono?" His face turned pale, and a stricken expression came into his eyes. "What... happened?"  
  
How could she tell him when knowing of that would only cause him more pain and guilt? "Nothing, Kenshin... nothing."  
  
By the time she went to bed Kaoru had convinced herself that it was only a cloud shadowing the moon.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
"How are you so far?"  
  
Mikomi looked up from the tub of water she was bending over. "Well, Megumi-san, the cups are almost done," she responded with what might have been a twinkle in her lavender eyes.  
  
Wondering whether the girl really meant that answer or was just teasing her, Megumi laughed slightly and said, "no, no, I was wondering how you have adjusted. I've been meaning to ask, but I haven't been able to come to the dojo as much as I would... like."  
  
"I *am* glad Kaoru-chan let me stay here," Mikomi answered. "And Kaoru-chan... Yahiko, Sano... Himura-san... have been very kind. I don't think I could have found a better... family." She rinsed the knife she was washing and shook off the water.  
  
The doctor nodded. She had more or less expected that reply, even the 'Himura-san' none of them could explain (after all, hadn't they introduced Kenshin as just Kenshin? And wasn't she close enough to them to drop all the formalities?). "Despite everything?"  
  
"Despite everything." The girl smiled. It was a strange smile, tinged with sorrow and age-old longing that somehow contrasted with her youthful face.  
  
It was then that Megumi realized that she had never, ever heard Mikomi laugh.  
  
Not that it was unnatural with Mikomi. Other people might have seemed tragic in this absence of laughter, but Mikomi didn't. And yet Mikomi so sparkled with life that she could even be as vibrant as Kaoru. The doctor mulled it over even as her hands washed a tiny porcelain cup.  
  
Megumi was never to know what prompted her next question, but the answer would trouble her for a long time. "Mikomi-san... if I may ask, where would you have gone if Kaoru hadn't asked you to stay at the dojo?"  
  
There was a long silence before Mikomi replied. "I... I would have gone on running again, I suppose," she said so softly Megumi had to strain to catch the words as they dropped from the girl's lips. "And probably have been killed as soon as I was out of the city." She smiled bitterly.  
  
At that moment a shadow covered the moon.  
  
The moonlight streaming in the shutters vanished and was replaced by unreal darkness. Mikomi stopped, surprised, and looked out at the darkened sky incredulously. "What..." she gasped to herself. "It can't be!"  
  
Maybe because she was looking at the water in the tub as the shadow blotted out the light, Megumi was the first to notice what happened to the water in the darkness.  
  
The water had turned to blood.  
  
Megumi raised frightened eyes to look at Mikomi. The color had completely drained out of the girl's face, and her lavender eyes were impossibly wide. It seemed to Megumi's suddenly fevered mind that it was Mikomi who was bleeding, and there was a stab wound at the hollow of her throat. Abstractedly, the ever-present doctor in Megumi fought against her fear and reminded herself that a wound like that was near-impossible to survive.  
  
"Mikomi-san?"  
  
The girl didn't seem to hear. Her lips moved as if in silent prayer, and finally a choked sob came out of her throat. "You have found me," she whispered to the shadow, the whisper not even reaching the other woman's ears. Mikomi finally looked down at her hands and felt her throat. The blood had trickled down, staining the plain blue kimono she wore. "No..."  
  
The bowl Megumi had been drying slipped from her suddenly nerveless fingers and crashed onto the floor, breaking into a thousand porcelain shards.  
  
Abruptly, the shadow disappeared, leaving the two women in the room bending over a tub of water beside porcelain fragments. The wound on Mikomi's throat and the bloodstains had disappeared as if they had never been, though her face was still very pale. "Daijoubu, Megumi-san?" she asked as the doctor shook herself free of her thoughts and tried to reassure herself that reality was as it should be.  
  
"I'm all right." Megumi's eyes flicked to Mikomi's face, then to the shattered bowl. As she started gathering the pieces, she asked, "What was that?"  
  
Color returned to Mikomi's face, and the tears disappeared. "Just a cloud passing over the moon."  
  
And yet... and yet, Megumi knew it was much, much more than that... it was another revelation, another omen, of this strange darkness that seemed to be growing, encroaching upon her awareness day by day like the hunter tracking his prey.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
Mikomi awoke before daybreak. The sky was still veiled in mist, the air still cold and asleep, and the girl drew her yukata closer about her and tried to warm herself as she rose from her futon and rolled it up. She drew open one of the sliding doors to her room, stepped out into the corridor, and padded on cat's feet to the small garden.  
  
She shivered as the cold mist drew its invisible arms around her, but did not walk away and instead sat down on a wooden step. Arms around herself and head bowed down, she let the cold seep slowly into her and remembered.  
  
The mist danced its coldness around her, shrouding her in white and making her seem more ethereal, supernatural... a pale ghost with dark hair bowed on a step with the weight of eternity and man's sorrows pressing down on her. The thought came to her then that in this mist of blindness and visions it was so easy to let go of life as she had long wanted to, to become one with the veil of white coldness and join the spirits of the dead.  
  
The dead...  
  
A tear trickled slowly down her pale cheek.  
  
The dead, and remembering...  
  
Remembering? But then she had never really forgotten. How could she, when all that she was, all that she would be... present and future, all hinged upon the past? And her duty, and her power.  
  
Her power.  
  
A bitter smile curved her lips as she thought of the power men would have killed to possess but she would have given everything to lose, the power that was both a blessing and a curse, the curse of her family and blessing of men. Oh, men would die -- men *had* died, suffered, and lived all over again only to experience reality -- all in the name of blind grasping for this power.  
  
But they would die, not knowing -- not being capable of knowing -- the full extent of the power that was not of men and worked its mysterious ways shrouded in the mist of false dawn. They woud die in their search for this power, for the heritage and the legacy that filled her life and thrummed through her veins like quicksilver, deadly beautiful.  
  
The weight of it all pressed heavier on her every day, bringing back the ancient pain and fear. She did not *want* this. She did not want to accept her duty, even her legacy. They, those who had gone before, had accepted the power; she had not yet. Not *yet*.  
  
It was futile to resist its call, to deny it dominion over her destiny.  
  
Then again, Mikomi had resisted the call of the power this long. If any of her blood still lived they would chide her and ask her why she refused to take up the duty that had been passed through her family throughout the years. Why?  
  
She was afraid! Afraid of what it would bring to bear in her life. Fear ruled her even now. Fear of *them* and of the power inside her.  
  
The power is not just a thing, her mother had said to her once. It is alive, and it has a will of its own. And it will not be weilded carelessly or without honor. Beware, for you may find that *it* is weilding *you*.  
  
Her family had suffered and died because none of them, not even her mother, were strong enough to bear the power while resisting its curse. Or to resist its overpowering will that would rule their lives from the moment of their first touching it to their last breath.  
  
Yet... what were they to do? They had no choice. None of them had...  
  
...not even she.  
  
Not even those of the Kamiya dojo. Not even the one now known as Himura. Tears filled her eyes as almost overpowering regret swept like a wave through her being, bringing with it new frustration and worried questions. He who had once been hitokiri and now was a man torn between the past and the future, did he see the warning she brought? Did he remember the shadow that had entered him once, more than a decade ago, and was poised to possess him completely yet again?  
  
Did he even know of the darkness?  
  
The question brought her up short and made her gasp. Perhaps he didn't. She knew that the others... Kaoru-chan, Yahiko, Sanosuke... did not even see the darkness, the evil, that even now hovered above them. Then again, they had only been drawn into this because of Himura-san...  
  
...because of that man who, long ago, had been a legend and lived as a contradiction of strength in a time of turmoil. Because of that man who the darkness had wanted to claim as its instrument. Because of him who was haunted by the shadow.  
  
Now the darkness had found *him*... and her.  
  
What would happen now?  
  
Mikomi had a sudden vision of the darkness' creatures overrunning the dojo bent on slaughter, and pushed it away. She had to face the consequences of coming here to warn *him*. But the others? They didn't have anything to do with the darkness. Would the darkness take them, too?  
  
Oh, if only... She shouldn't have come here!... but how could she have warned Battousai... and Megumi-san... otherwise?  
  
As she raised her arms to the mist, dazzling pinpoints of cold enfolding her, she let herself be lost in the past.  
  
Remembering...  
  
And the memories took form in the swirling, infinitely cold and cruel white mist.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
As always, Kenshin rose before the sun, the eerie cold of the air before dawn enfolding him in silence. The steel-gray light of false dawn etched his face and hair in lead as he stepped quietly out of his small room and through the hallways of the dojo.  
  
He paused before Kaoru's room and nudged the door softly open. Kaoru lay on her futon in the sound slumber of the innocent and idealistic. Her face was somewhat sobered the gravity of one who has seen life and its reality, but still glowed with the promise and hope of one who keeps the cherished ideals and dreams close by, never letting the disappointments of the world extinguish the flame.  
  
Her soul was delicate and pure as butterfly wings that soar up to the heights of heaven... how could he taint her with the darkness of his? Touch her innocence with his hands that knew blood and death as nightmares of the past?...  
  
[Battousai... I have found you, and now that I have... the shadow shall claim all that is you and yours.]  
  
Kenshin turned abruptly at the sibilant whisper in his mind. It was sourceless, as that wind had been, and it was, once again, a warning. That the danger, the evil, was inching closer with every passing moment.  
  
And it knew him. Knew every aspect of him, every thought that had passed through his brain. Kenshin saw in that brief flash of thought through which he was connected to the evil by its whispering, that it also understood him. The evil understood his thoughts and his whole being far, far better than he understood himself, and it knew the darkness and light that struggled continuously at the center of his being.  
  
He passed a hand over his eyes, trying to clear his mind of those thoughts. He had never felt the darkness of the shadowed secrets more than he did now... had never before, in the months past, felt the instinctive chill that ran through him whenever he saw himself mirrored in Mikomi's lavender eyes.  
  
(Mikomi...)  
  
She would know. How could she not? She heralded the wind, with all the secrets and shadows following in its wake.  
  
His footsteps sounded very loud on the wooden floor as he almost ran through the corridors and to Mikomi's room, hurried on by the... urgency, the need to know. He slid open the door of the room Kaoru had given her.  
  
Nothing.  
  
A soft cry, filled with infinite despair, drew him to the garden. He found the girl there, dark hair falling in shadowed night over her pale, exquisite face twisted in pain, a ghost in the unearthly mist. She held a sword in her lap, shrouded by white and stinging cold.  
  
He knew that sword. He had weilded it for several thousand times all which he wished to forget, reaving with it the life and blood of men, the sustenance of their families, igniting with it rage and sorrow and powerless, helpless despair.  
  
For a timeless, terrible moment Kenshin stood there, as powerless to move as when he first saw her lavender eyes, as the sword lifted itself from her lap. Drawn by an unseen force, the sword dipped its point once suspended as it was in mid-air... as if in salute, then, smoothly, without stopping, stabbed itself deep into Mikomi... into the vulnerable part of her throat where throbbed the vein of life's blood.  
  
Kenshin felt motion rush back into him, weakening him so abruptly he cried out in the pain of discovery and the helplessness of the beings caught in Destiny's weave. The sword shimmered and disappeared into the illusions of memory... and Mikomi looked up, lavender eyes startled, then rushed to his side even as his strength failed him and he fell to the ground. The white cotton of her yukata whispered against her as she bent at his side, and Kenshin's eyes saw nothing, no scar, no wound, from the illusion of Battousai's sword.  
  
"Himura-san!" she gasped. "What are you doing here... up so early, I mean?"  
  
Silence. There was no need for him to answer. By the expression of their eyes meeting each other, so alike and yet so far apart, he understood that she knew what he had seen.  
  
There would be no changing that.  
  
And now all that was left were the shadows and dangers, darker and more menacing than before, for they had been strengthened by age-old guilt that had trickled its unforgiving way through Kenshin's heart and now burst free from its shackles of oblivion, flooding vengefully even the core where the secrets of darkness and light lay.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
Megumi's brown eyes darted worriedly between Kenshin and Mikomi as she picked her way through the "lunch" Kaoru had attempted to cook. Their expressions were strained, as if they were keeping the strength of their emotions tightly within control, restraining their thoughts that held truths too painful to admit.  
  
Between them vibrated a silence laden with forced acknowledgement that screamed its *wrongness* at Megumi's unusually keen perception. The lavender of Mikomi's eyes was drowning in the dark pupils of her despair... and, strangely, fear... but Kenshin's violet was darker, shadowed by something that went far deeper than guilt and reached into the depths of his nightmare past.  
  
Still, Mikomi... the silence she drew about herself was of secrecy, tantalizingly hovering on the edges of her understanding but remaining out of reach. (Then she *must* have been trying to escape what this 'darkness' is... but then again...)  
  
She glanced at Kaoru, trying to gauge her reaction. Kaoru's blue eyes were worried, apprehensive, and the young woman clearly doubted the mask of "everyday" that Kenshin persistently pulled over the trouble in his heart. Kaoru saw no longer the rurouni, but the Kenshin closest to the truth he struggled to deny, and she felt, as sharply as if she herself were going through what he was, that the truth hurt him.  
  
(If only she *knew*,) Megumi thought. (If only I could tell her! but I can't -- won't -- because this is something she has to find out about Mikomi, about Kenshin, for herself.) Her hand lifted slightly, to pass itself over her weary eyes, but then stopped. (Must not show any sign of weariness -- or weakness.)  
  
Yet how could she not, when all this was happening in so short a time and threatened her everyday life as she knew it? Her life, Kenshin's life, the others' lives, unknowing as they were. And -- she sighed inwardly, remembering the sudden flash of darkness' storms that had touched her awareness briefly -- not only their way of living, but perhaps even whether they lived. Or died.  
  
She glanced at Sanosuke to see if *he* saw, instinctively smothering a flame of guilt -- or something else that asked whether she was not merely finding an excuse to look at his face once more, memorizing every detail of it as she was wont to. No, no... Such nonsense! and her mind laughed nervously at herself, half-afraid and half-ashamed at those thoughts. In the brown depths of his eyes -- those eyes... (Stop it, Megumi!) -- she saw confusion and trouble swirling like long-placid water now disturbed by unfamiliar, strange, circumstances.  
  
Sano looked at her, asking silently, What's going on?  
  
Nothing, she replied without words, instead with a slight inclination of her head that hid her surprise at understanding him so well. No... something, but you do not need to know.  
  
Why...? he gestured it this time with a slight frown and a question echoing all the stronger in his brown eyes. Is it them, kitsune-onna? with a barely-concealed glance at Kenshin quietly brooding, Kaoru watching him, and Mikomi lost in her own world of despair.  
  
She shrugged, then darted a warning glance at him and looked at Yahiko. Don't let him be drawn into this, baka.  
  
A glare, a sniff of irritation. Of course not.  
  
Megumi smirked at him, one eyebrow raised, sarcastic gestures that quickly banished the bewilderment in her heart with the amusement of teasing Sano. He was almost too easy to annoy, and she was enjoying this anyway. Really now, roosterhead, do you think you can *not* blab everything to them with all your famous tact? Hmmmm?  
  
Sanosuke grimaced in reply, then looked away -- to her it seemed as if he almost tore his eyes away from her (No, Megumi. You're only fooling yourself... and besides, why care about what that baka thinks? or does?) -- only to catch Yahiko trying to steal his remaining food. "Oi, Yahiko-chan, you must be really hungry... to try to eat more of Jou-chan's cooking."  
  
Yahiko struggled against Sanosuke's arm that was holding him at bay. "Don't call me -chan!" He grumbled, then added, "I wouldn't be doing this if I weren't so hungry. Kaoru's outdone her usual bad cooking."  
  
Kaoru, still deep in thought, protested with only "Yahiko-chan!" and nothing of her usual physical reinforcement. Megumi shook her head slightly, a small smile playing on her lips, then gave in and decided to shake Kaoru out of her worried line of thought. "Are you sure you're feeling well, Yahiko-chan? Only delirium would make anyone want more of *this*. Here, let me feel your forehead."  
  
An enraged Yahiko pried her fingers from his forehead while trying to bite Sano's hair, with Kaoru -- finally roused from her reverie -- drawing her bokken and managing to hit both Sanosuke and Yahiko with it. All in all, things were shaping up to be a splendid fight, but one that was hardly appropriate given the circumstances. Then again, that had never stopped them... and they had never received the kind of warning Megumi had.  
  
Megumi ducked to avoid a flying chopstick, then with an "I think I'd better go now, arigatou," she made her getaway out a door.  
  
She was hurrying down the street when she heard the patter of slippered feet behind her and Mikomi's voice. "Megumi-san!"  
  
(Well, finally... I hope *she'll* be able to clear this up. What the warning tells about is not something to be dismissed.)  
  
"Mikomi-san."  
  
"Megumi-san..." Mikomi ran up to her. Now that the girl was closer, Megumi could see the dark circles underneath Mikomi's lavender eyes, which contrasted with her pale, pale skin. Mikomi caught Megumi's arm, and the doctor was surprised by just how strong the grip of her fingers -- cold, slender vices around her wrist -- were. "Matte, Megumi-san... don't leave yet."  
  
(I won't, not if the words come from *you*.) "What is it, Mikomi-san?" she asked, trying to keep her voice as pleasant and steady -- and noncommital -- as possible.  
  
The hand around Megumi's wrist tightened. [You don't understand!] Megumi's eyes widened as they took in the blazing intensity of the girl's pale face and the doctor heard the thought as clearly as if Mikomi had spoken it. "Please, Megumi-san. You're the one person among them who is able to understand what is really happening."  
  
Megumi shook herself free of Mikomi's hand and the gaze of her lavender eyes. "I?" she protested. "I don't even know what this is about!" Her voice was escalating into little-known bafflement and panic, causing Mikomi to pull her inside a doorway of an abandoned house. "Can't you tell that I'm even more confused than they are?"  
  
The girl bowed her head. "Yes," she whispered. [And much, much more... If only I could tell you! If only you would understand!]  
  
The tone of Mikomi's voice made Megumi want to pound her hand against the wooden wall in frustration. "How?" Her question carried with it the anger of one helplessly in the dark. "Who are you, Mikomi? Why are you doing this?" Then, because the question had been echoing in the vaults of her mind for so long, "What is this all about? Why are you playing games with my -- and Ken-san's -- mind?"  
  
"I'm not."  
  
"Why are you doing this, then?"  
  
Mikomi looked at her carefully. "What 'this' are you talking about, Megumi-san?"  
  
"You know very well what I'm talking about," Megumi snapped, her patience coming to an end. "The darkness... the warning... everything. Ever since you've come things have... changed."  
  
Mikomi's reply sent chills racing up and down Megumi's spine. "Would you rather have had no warning of what was to come, Megumi-san? The darkness... what you saw in my thoughts... is coming, and nothing I can do will change that."  
  
"I don't understand."  
  
The younger girl dropped her gaze, but when she spoke again her voice was no longer that of the innocent girl who had settled as a friend in their lives only a few weeks ago but that of a woman -- a survivor -- forced to mature and be strong by events over which she had no control. "No. You don't." She paused. "How much *do* you know, Megumi-san?"  
  
"Nothing."  
  
A faint smile curved Mikomi's lips. "Come now, Megumi-san," she murmured gently, persuasively, "if I am as sinister as you think I am, I *must* know that you looked into my thoughts the day we first met."  
  
"Looked into your thoughts? That's ridiculous." (Ridiculous that she knows. Who *is* this girl?)  
  
"Megumi-san," Mikomi said firmly, dropping the pretense of gentle vulnerability, "if you want the truth you must be prepared to give it."  
  
Megumi sighed. It was not like her to accept the supernatural; even less like her to believe, or give consideration to, the stray whispers and warnings that had haunted her thoughts since she had seen the girl. But try as she might, she could *not* put aside the sense of almost tangible dread that overshadowed her. "Only... darkness," she answered finally. "Something that seemed to be made of pure, inhuman evil. And overwhelming fear." She looked closely at the other girl. "And I thought... it was strange, that someone like you would fear so much."  
  
"Strange? Not really, if you think about it," the girl replied, her voice once more gentle and hovering on the edge of being a whisper. "Everyone is afraid of something. Even you, Megumi-san... *you* are afraid of your own feelings more than anything else." Mikomi's lavender eyes deepened into thoughtful evening, and she opened her mouth to speak again.  
  
Megumi interrupted more out of a desire not to hear the rest of Mikomi's words than anything else. "I'd be very grateful if *you* could explain yourself as well, Mikomi-san," she said dryly, her veil of dark hair hiding her (hopefully still neutral) face.  
  
Mikomi smiled one of her cryptic little smiles. "That is only fair, isn't it?" She smiled again, but this time the smile was tinged with sorrow. "What is to explain? You -- and Kenshin-san -- have received the warning and know of my fear. That is enough."  
  
"No, Mikomi-san, it isn't."  
  
"But..."  
A sigh escaped Megumi's lips. "Mikomi," she began, intentionally dropping the honorific, "I have to admit that I still don't understand. And I *still* don't know who you really are."  
  
"Is that really important, Megumi-san? Can't you just think of me as a messenger?"  
  
Megumi shook her head and tried to keep her voice from betraying the frustration she felt. "Of course I can't, because I know you're much more than that. Please, Mikomi-san, stop playing games and at least tell me the truth!"  
  
"Kami-sama, Megumi-san," the girl hissed, her voice suddenly like steel and her eyes alive with lavender fire, "you think this is just a game? You think I risked my life by coming within reach of a hitokiri to play *games*?"  
  
The doctor was stunned by the younger woman's reaction and tried to answer. (Hitokiri?! She knows?) "It's just..." She stopped, struggled with it, and resisted the urge to throw up her hands in the air in exasperation. "I have never believed in anything I don't see. And I don't *want* to believe or accept this 'darkness'... this warning, those 'signs'... or..." and the last word trembled on her lips as a drop of dew on a flower petal, "you."  
  
"Then *trust* your feelings, Megumi-san! You *know* you can see things they -- the others -- can't. Why don't you trust the warning? Why don't you look into your thoughts to see what the darkness really is?" Mikomi released Megumi's arm and looked up, as if searching for reassurance. "I know you are never going to trust me until you know everything," she said finally. "Maybe it's just as well. But maybe this time you need to learn how to trust what other people say... and take their word for what it is." Something cold and wet trickled down Megumi's cheek, and she saw that it was starting to rain.  
  
Mikomi looked up as well and blinked her eyelashes as the raindrops settled on her face and hair. "If you still don't believe, ask Himura-san about the shadow and his past. *He* will tell you... and you will believe him, if not me."  
  
(Ken-san's past? How could she know... more... about him than it seems we do?)  
  
Without another word, Mikomi inclined her head briefly, then turned and walked back to the dojo.  
  
She did not look back.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
Kaoru sat down on the porch beside Kenshin and looked anxiously at his troubled violet eyes. There was emotion in them she thought she would never see again... the guilt of the hitokiri overshadowed by something that was even darker and touched a part of him that had never been illuminated by the light of discovery or truth. She worried about that. She worried that, for the past few days, the Kenshin she knew had gradually been slipping away from her and was being drawn into a whirlpool of shadows and mystery. She worried... she worried that she would lose him.  
  
In the end, she spoke in fear that Kenshin *had* slipped away and was impossibly lost in the web of memories that he had surrounded himself with. "Kenshin?"  
  
Kenshin started and gave a short, choking sort of gasp. "Kaoru-dono," he answered, then looked out into the rain and shook his head slightly, as if to clear it.  
  
"What's wrong?"  
  
"It's nothing..." Kenshin's eyes took on a strange expression as he looked out at the rain. "Nothing you should trouble yourself about, Kaoru-dono. I was just... thinking."  
  
She sensed a note of intense pain in his voice and felt answering tears prickling her eyes. Blinking them away, she murmured, "if you want to talk about it, I'm here."  
  
He gazed at her for an eternal moment before answering. "Kaoru..." he began, and caught himself, "-dono... arigatou." A hand took hers and pressed it gratefully.  
  
Strangely, Kaoru felt a part of her somehow... angered by Kenshin's reply, as if she were a child being unjustly shielded from the knowledge that rightfully belonged to her as much as it did to him. How could she help him when he wouldn't tell her anything? She wanted nothing as much as to share his heart and the emotions in it... to be allowed to heal the wounds and enfold him in the future's promise without brooding about the past. And this... oh, *why* did he persist in keeping to himself things that hurt the more they were kept secret?  
  
"I--" she began, and stopped.  
  
As she spoke the wind abruptly changed direction and grew stronger, whipping the rain at her face. Dark clouds roiled into existence overhead, and lightning flashed across the suddenly stormy sky.  
  
Kenshin rose to shield her from the ice-sharp needles of rain. "Get inside!" he shouted, trying to make his voice heard over the roar of thunder. Sanosuke, shielding Megumi with his jacket, appeared at the dojo gates and ran inside with Kenshin and Kaoru.  
  
"What happened to you?" Kaoru asked Sano and Megumi as soon as they were inside.  
  
Megumi wrung out a lock of dark hair. "I was on my way to the clinic when the storm suddenly broke. And then this roosterhead came out of nowhere and dragged me back here."  
  
"Hey!" Sanosuke protested.  
  
"I didn't say anything, roosterhead," Megumi said sweetly. "Actually I should even thank you for doing that. I wouldn't have made it to the clinic if I hadn't turned back. And at least I didn't get as wet as *you* did."  
  
Sanosuke blinked.  
  
Kaoru took one look at his expression and burst out laughing. "Didn't expect that, did you Sano? What *were* you doing there? I thought you were helping out at the Akabeko."  
  
The wind tore at the dojo before Sanosuke could reply, almost tearing the sliding doors from their frames. Megumi stood up and walked to the other side of the room as the door behind her came loose and streamed away in the wind, letting in the pounding rain. "I've never seen a storm like that," she commented as she took her seat beside Kaoru. "Did you see how suddenly it began?" A crash of thunder, following the lightning that danced across the sky, punctuated that statement.  
  
Kenshin nodded in agreement, then tensed as something came to him. In a moment he was gone, running from the central room to somewhere else.  
  
"Is it just me, or is Kenshin a little uptight these days?" Sanosuke said to nobody in particular a few moments after the rurouni disappeared.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
"Mikomi-dono," Kenshin's voice softly came from outside the girl's room.  
  
No answer.  
  
"Mikomi-dono." Kenshin frowned at the silence, then nudged the sliding door slightly and looked in.  
  
Mikomi was kneeling on the floor, face streaked with tears and hands clenched at her sides. In her lavender eyes there burned an expression Kenshin had never seen before: unutterable anguish, inhuman resolve, and a fury so great and fiery the air around her almost crackled with it.  
  
There was so much raw emotion in the room Kenshin began to think twice about speaking with her. He sighed, sympathetically, and was just about to raise his hand to the door when she spoke.  
  
"What do you want?" she asked hoarsely.  
  
The storm outside grew more furious, the rain pounding like a thousand lead hammers on the roof and the thunder roaring with a powerful voice of its own. --Nothing much, Lady. Out of honor, we merely wished to let you know...--  
  
The anguish in Mikomi's face vanished, to be replaced by contempt. "Let me know what?" she cut the voice short, anger flashing into her lavender eyes. "Let me know that you almost have me in your clutches? As the hunter gives the prey a moment's warning before he kills it in cold blood? How very honorable."  
  
--Hssst! Have a care, Lady Hoshino. You would not do well to endanger the lives of those under this roof,-- the wind whispered. Kenshin's blood froze as he suddenly remembered. (Kaoru!)  
  
"You will stop this storm." Mikomi's lavender eyes narrowed dangerously and her fingers tightened around the curious diamond star she held. "Now."  
  
A white-blue claw of fire lanced across the sky. --As you wish. You may also wish to start running again, Lady.-- Outside, the storm raked at the dojo once, then stopped as suddenly as it had begun. The pounding of the rain lessened to a few occasional patters on the roof.  
  
Kenshin didn't hear Mikomi's reply. He had stumbled away from the doorway and now leaned against a wall. What... was happening? Who... was Mikomi? More importantly, what was she, to so converse with unseen spirits who had the power to summon storms and were of the supernatural darkness? He had long wondered about her, asked himself about her fear and despair, been troubled by his reflection in her lavender eyes. And now that he had seen this...  
  
He tried to compose his thoughts and push all his fears aside as he looked once more into Mikomi's room. She had collapsed onto her futon and was sobbing -- tearing sobs full of regret and guilt that seemed to be torn from her soul. An expression of infinite compassion came into Kenshin's eyes and softened the trouble in them as he saw her thus. "Mikomi-dono..." he whispered as he quietly walked away.  
  
Already he had decided that he would ask her his questions later, perhaps tomorrow. Right now... if he knew anything of the emotions of a tormented soul... she would need silence, and solitude, to calm herself. Asking her to explain something that had caused her so much pain would only wound her more.  
  
The rurouni did not have long to wait for the answers, however.  
  
That night, as his sleep was tortured by dreams of the nightmare past, the silence was shattered by a piercing scream that seemed to be ripped from the heart of fear itself.  
  
Then the scream stopped, as if cut off by a phantom hand.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Tsuzuku!  
  
Glossary:  
aa = yes  
baka = idiot, stupid  
-chan = Form of address that implies a certain fondness and familiarity, most used by girls with their friends  
itadakimasu = said before a meal; "bon apetit" or just "let's eat!"  
jou-chan = jou:girl, female; so jou-chan is something like "Little Miss" or something like that... eeg, it's not easy to translate ^^  
kami-sama = "God"  
kitsune-onna = kitsune:fox, onna:lady, woman; so kitsune-onna is 'Fox Lady'  
maa = placating expression; "calm down" or something like that... it loses a lot in the translation ^^  
matte = wait  
mou = expression of mild irritation; "geez"  
onigiri = food; sushi-like with seaweed wrapped around it 


	3. Default Chapter Title

Author's notes: This part was harder to write than the previous two, maybe because there's so much "action" in it. ::makes a face:: I don't write action very well (or romance, or drama, or comedy... and I hope this isn't turning out to be dark -- is it? it's supposed to be sort-of fantasy or something like that) but I decided I'd balance it with more thought-scenes. Oh, and this part was written much more hurriedly than the others... I don't know why. Maybe because I was sort of depressed and/or ic-afflicted? I certainly didn't have the inspiration I did in part two ^^  
Part three would never have been written without Chibi Chiriko-san, her directions to several places to go to for RK stuff ::sparkle:: and most of all those wonderful comments that pushed me to keep on writing this. And also to my prereaders, Setsuna-san and Jackie-san~! You guys are the best... thanks for the ideas, crits and comments ::hugs::  
Oh! Almost forgot. This is not historically accurate at all -- though I *did* spend a few hours in research about the ancient Japan thing (and promptly disregarded whatever I turned up during that time in favor of 'creative license'). You can say it's sort of alternate reality... ::sweatdrops:: Standard disclaimers apply. As always, comments are very very welcome at sumire@rurouni.com (onegaiiiiii...)  
Written June 2000  
* * for emphasis, ( ) for thoughts, [ ] for mindspeech, ... ... flashback/vision  
  
Preceding part(s):  
Part 1: What Brings the Wind  
Part 2: Shadowed Secrets  
  
Starlight, Hellfire  
Part 3: The Mark of Blood  
by Mia Sereno  
  
Kekkon [Bloodstain]:  
......Wash as he may, still......  
On the killer's hands, unseen  
....The bloodstain remains....  
  
The silence that reigned over the Kamiya dojo was palpable, a living thing that one could almost touch and lose oneself in to never be found again. Outside the sky was perfectly dark, the moon and stars shrouded in shadows that faded into the night.  
  
Mikomi shivered. She couldn't sleep. The quiet and the dark, instead of soothing her as they always had, frightened her, as if they hid and concealed horror too great for her to comprehend. Something rustled in the dark night outside, and she flinched at the sound.  
  
(I'm sure *they* would be amused if they could see me now. Frightened by the dark, indeed!)  
  
She finally gave up on trying to sleep and sat up, wrapping her arms around her and looking out into the darkness. There was something in the air that troubled her, a malevolent presence that almost reached out to her in a gesture of infinite longing and hatred. Somehow, though the night was perfectly still, a voice in her mind kept screaming its warning at her, telling her to beware. The last time she had felt this way... the last time she had heard this voice... was when she had set out to warn... Himura-san... and almost died before she even saw him.  
  
Suppose... tonight... *they* of the evil would come?  
  
It would not be unexpected if they did. Once more, the hunters of the darkness had found their prey. The next step would be to kill her, something they had been attempting ever since she was a little girl. With the resignation of one whose life had been ruled by the law of death and escape from it, with one's soul growing slowly numb to fear until it walked beside her as a panther waiting to pounce, Mikomi knew that all she could do was wait.  
  
And so she did.  
  
Yet... yet her thoughts still troubled her. Knowing the darkness as she did, Mikomi knew how cruel the fate of those who helped its enemies was. Kaoru-chan... Yahiko... Sanosuke... would they, too, become targets of the darkness as she, Himura-san -- and perhaps Megumi-san -- were? The thought was too much to bear, and her head bowed to hide the tears in her eyes from the night.  
  
...The darkness was coming...  
  
For what seemed like the thousandth time she cursed her heritage. Oh, what she would have given to not be born under the curse of the Keeper's duty! But she was, and there was no changing that.  
  
There was no changing, either, the danger she had brought to the dojo by her very presence.  
  
Or was there?  
  
What if the others had *always* been in danger, not because of her, but because of Himura-san? It was possible, wasn't it? He had been... was... after all, the Hitokiri Battousai. And if her look in Megumi-san's mind had meant anything, Kaoru-chan and the others had been in danger ever since they had met him.  
  
The thought calmed her for a moment and troubled her even more after that, as all thoughts about Himura-san were wont to. The darkness was after him as well. The possession of a man with such a soul, with such a will, and with such power lying untapped within him must have been irresistible to the demons. Once -- if -- the shadow that had haunted him for so long was able to take over his mind, he would be the darkness' instrument, lost to the evil. Mikomi drew a long, shuddering breath as she contemplated that possibility.  
  
...The darkness was coming...  
  
"Stop it, Mikomi!" she whispered to herself. She forced herself to be calmer and think about it more reasonably. Even the demons who were the darkness had weaknesses, things they didn't understand. They didn't know -- as she did -- that Himura-san's very essence was the reason he was so powerful; if the darkness took away his soul he would lose that which had borne him through more trials than should be encountered in a lifetime by any mortal, even a hitokiri, even a killer.  
  
...The darkness was coming...!  
  
The evil was bent on claiming its own. Soon, though he did not know it yet, Himura-san would have to make a choice between giving in to the darkness... or trying to resist it. Mikomi knew that he *would* fight the darkness as long as he still lived -- if not for himself, or for herself, then for Kaoru-chan... for truth and for life, for what he had always believed in. But would Himura-san still choose to fight if he knew that he was putting the others in even more danger by doing so?  
  
The girl closed her eyes. He would choose correctly. He *must*.  
  
Still, that did not prevent the evil from threatening the lives of those in the dojo. She would have to leave as soon as possible, now that the evil found her... as soon as Himura-san knew what he must do.  
  
A soft growl broke into her thoughts. Mikomi's head came up sharply as her eyes scanned the room, all the while wondering if the sound or the slight movement she saw was just a product of her fevered imagination.  
  
Licking her suddenly parched lips, the girl stood up and took the diamond star from her obi. "Who's there?" she asked shakily. Her voice sounded very small in the night.  
  
Silence.  
  
Slowly an inky black shadow detached itself from the darkness and glided towards the center of the room. It solidified quickly, drawing the night about it, until it stood as a man, body completely filled with black, with blazing red eyes looking out of the darkness of what would be its head. Mikomi blinked lavender eyes and shrank back until her back touched the wall, trying to reassure herself that she was still awake; not trapped in some nightmare. The only sound in the room was that of the girl's half-choked breathing.  
  
"Lady Hoshino." The voice was smooth, like poison, and seemed to be drawn from the depths of some unimaginable abyss.  
  
Mikomi bowed her head and struggled to keep her fear in check as she looked death full in the face. Finally a single gasped syllable dropped from her lips, throbbing with the bitterness and hate of years. "You!"  
  
The dark figure inclined his head. "Indeed. I see that you have still delayed the assuming of your duties, Lady," he said, his tone neither one of reproof or commendation. He just said what he did.  
  
"You speak of something you know nothing about, demon." She tried to suppress the   
indignation in her voice, and couldn't. "What would a creature of darkness know about the Keeper and her duties?"  
  
"One should find out everything one can about one's enemies, Lady Hoshino. I must say we have been baffled by your continued refusal to accept the fact that you *are* the Keeper."  
  
The girl's eyes narrowed. "One should not judge one's enemies, either. I am no more the Keeper than you are, Wraith."  
  
"And yet you belong to the line of the Keepers that has existed for centuries. As the sole survivor of that line, should you not accept your family's duty? Do you not owe that much to your father?"  
  
The Wraith's reference to her father seemed to strike something deep in Mikomi, hurting her more than any insult could have. "I do not see why the creatures of darkness are so concerned about the Keeper's existence," she retorted icily, "when they should be overjoyed that for more than a decade there has been no Keeper and that for all that time the barrier between the two worlds has stood defenseless."  
  
A smirk twisted the formless lips. "Indeed. Do you know how near collapse the Gate is, Lady Hoshino? All that is needed for it to give way is your death."  
  
Mikomi did not answer, but her fingers tightened around the small jewel in her hand.  
  
"You know why I have come." The demon raised his right hand and clenched it into a fist, letting supernatural fire -- red as blood and golden as a killer's eyes -- form around it. "If you were the Keeper you would be able to delay your inevitable death, but because of your stubborn refusal to accept your duty, you do not have the Keeper's power. Thus you will die." The girl could hear the distinct sound the fire made as it crackled around the Wraith's fist, and she tried not to listen as she desperately tried to think of a way out.  
  
The demon glided over to her just as she screamed. Trying to give the others a warning, and maybe time to escape...  
  
Then the scream gave way to excruciating pain as the demon wrapped his flaming hand around her throat.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
Kenshin's violet eyes snapped open as soon as he heard the scream. In an instant his sakabatou was in his hand and he was running down the corridor to Mikomi's room.  
  
Once there he slid the door open, brushing it easily aside, and stopped, aghast. A figure in the shape of a man, his form etched in darkness, was choking the girl with hands that seemed to be aflame and red with blood. As Kenshin unsheathed his sakaba Mikomi's face twisted and an involuntary cry came to her lips. "Himura-san! No!"  
  
The swordsman's eyes narrowed, the golden flecks in them not entirely a reflection of the fire in the demon's hands. "Let her go," he said, his voice very soft. Crimson, pupilless eyes turned their gaze from the girl to Kenshin as he charged towards the demon, then widened, as if in recognition. The Wraith's hands tightened involuntarily around Mikomi's throat in an emotion as close to panic as was possible for a demon.  
  
Mikomi screamed again as the flaming, clawlike fingers dug into her skin.  
  
A swirling doorway -- an entrance to another place? he didn't really know -- suddenly materialized behind the demon and the girl, and as Mikomi's lavender eyes dilated and Kenshin reached them, the Wraith backed into the portal. Dragging the girl with him.  
  
Behind him Kenshin could hear Kaoru's footsteps and a sharp intake of breath. "What the-- Kami-sama! Mikomi-chan...!"  
  
The doorway began to waver, shrinking into nothingness. Kenshin's hand tightened around his sakabatou's hilt, and breathing a silent prayer to the gods to keep the girl, and Kaoru, safe, he clenched his jaw and dove into the rapidly disappearing entrance.  
  
The last thing he heard was Kaoru's terrified cry. "Kenshin!"  
  
Then a peculiar tingling, and pitch-black void that swallowed him up totally, as night extinguishes the day.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
Sudden pain lanced through her mind, dragging her from the nether region of sleep to the less compassionate reality of life. Megumi growled as she was jolted awake, sat up and rubbed her head. "Aggggh," she groaned. "Head feels like it's on fire..."  
  
She got up, drew her yukata around her and retied the obi, and went into the clinic itself to look for the herbs she kept for severe headaches. Her bare feet made almost no sound as they touched the wooden floor, and in a few moments she was hunched over the set of medicine drawers. Her fingers, fumbling blindly in the darkness, finally found the herb bag and took it out. Megumi's sigh of relief as she undid the knots was somewhat marred by the stab of pain at her mind.  
  
Megumi inhaled the pungent smell of the herbs and half-smiled to herself, expecting the pain to go away soon. She was unpleasantly surprised when it didn't.  
  
"Oh god."  
  
That only meant one thing: the pain wasn't hers. She had been experiencing this since she first discovered her ability to look into others' thoughts, occasional flashes of pain in her mind whenever someone close to her was in agony, be it agony of the spirit or agony of the mind. When her father, to whom she had been closer than any other human being, died she had gone through so much that since then she had closed her mind. Closed it to anything other than ordinary human perception.  
  
Closed it until she had met Mikomi.  
  
For a brief moment Megumi wondered if using her gift -- or curse -- once more had been a wise decision. Then the doubt disappeared when the thought came to her that prudence was overruled by necessity, that wisdom and normal common sense couldn't be applied in situations like these that were very, very far from normal.  
  
Situations like these... the thought was cut off in mid-thread by another burst of pain that brought her attention back to just who the ache was coming from. Ignoring the splitting headache, she sent a feeler of thought out to follow the pain back to its source.  
  
...Mikomi!  
  
The girl's mind was a welter of emotions and split-second choices that only faintly resembled coherent thoughts. Megumi frowned, her breath hissing between her teeth as she persistently dug deeper and tried to piece those thoughts together into a picture of what was happening to the girl.  
  
Mikomi was in... her room, and her throat hurt as if someone had wrapped a choker of heat around it. As Megumi concentrated even more she could feel the despair in the girl's mind clearly: hopelessness, and resignation to her fate. Then a strange surprise and an even stranger terror as Kenshin burst into the room.  
  
After a torrent of confused emotions through which Megumi couldn't see, Mikomi calmed herself down enough to think about what she had to do. Through the girl's eyes she could glimpse a strange -- what? a doorway of some sort? -- and sense a burning force dragging her towards it. Fear clutched Megumi's throat. What...  
  
[No, Mikomi! You must break free!]  
  
But the mindspeech came too late. The girl disappeared into the portal -- Megumi could sense what it was now -- whatever had dragged her into it still holding her by the throat. The doctor could feel the sense, almost akin to relief, that washed over Mikomi in a wave of acceptance. She was going to die, but at least she had not drawn anyone else into the danger...  
  
A silent cry. [Himura-sannnnn!]  
  
Kenshin had followed Mikomi into the portal.  
  
The trouble that jolted the girl reached out to Megumi as well, tinged with worry for Kaoru and Yahiko, left behind. Then the crystallization of decision. [Megumi-san!]  
  
*That* surprised her. Mikomi knew that she was in her thoughts?  
  
[Aa. Megumi-san, Kaoru-chan and Yahiko are in danger.]  
  
[And *you* aren't?]  
  
The portal disappeared, and for a moment the link between their two minds wavered. [Perhaps I am. I don't really care, as long as no one else is affected by this.] The sheer lack of hope in that statement struck Megumi like a blow. [The darkness knows where I am now, and it may try to...] a brief flicker, [...harm them. Sanosuke *must* go to them. You, as well.]  
  
[Me? I can't fight!]  
  
[You won't have to. Kaoru-chan needs someone to tell her that everything will be all right.]  
  
[Will it?]  
  
A brief flicker of emotion. [I don't know, Megumi-san. I really don't know.] Then all contact with Mikomi broke, like a snapped thread, and Megumi found herself staring at the dried leaves scattered on the floor, releasing the sharp smell of reality into the waiting night air.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
He was standing on a featureless plain that was lit by some unknown source, with the demon and Mikomi standing some distance from him. As he ran to Mikomi she wrenched out of the dark figure's grip and collapsed on the ground. The gold slowly faded out of Kenshin's eyes when he heard the gasps that escaped her throat, reassuring him that she could still breathe. "Why have you brought me here?" she whispered, just as Kenshin reached her.  
  
"Merely an expression of my respect, Lady Hoshino. It would not do for she who would be the Keeper to die an ordinary death."  
  
The part of him that was growing in disbelief and man's fear of the supernatural died as the Kenshin who *knew* of these events and the supernatural as well as he knew the back of his hand struggled to break out of the prison ten years and the hitokiri's pain had created. Kenshin bent over the girl, interposing himself between her and her assailant. "Mikomi-dono... what happened?" he asked as she raised her pale face. Then, "what is all this about?"  
  
Mikomi gasped as she looked up at him and into his eyes. "Himura-san! I... no! Why are you here?" She rose to her feet with some effort and faced the demon. "Why have you brought him here, Wraith? No one has a part in this except you... and I."  
  
"He came of his own free will, Keeper."  
  
"What?!" Mikomi's lavender eyes widened and she swayed, holding a hand to the wounded skin of her throat. "Why...?"  
  
"I couldn't let you die," he said quietly. "Not again." Then Kenshin stopped. The words had just... slipped out of that part of his mind buried in the mist of forgotten memories and the past lived by another. Those words! What part did Mikomi play in his past? Why did the hitokiri remember her...?  
  
Slowly, painfully, Mikomi raised her face and let her eyes meet his. Violet reflected its paler counterpart, darkening in infinite despair and the terrible pain of knowledge, and finally Kenshin turned away, as if he couldn't bear to look into those eyes any longer. "I... don't... understand all this. What is happening, Mikomi-dono?" Somehow the question's tone alternated between bewilderment, the need to know and to see past the veil that had shrouded the truth about her, and overwhelming dread of what the answer would be, dread born of the chilling premonition seen in the light of her lavender eyes.  
  
A shadow passed over Mikomi's face, blotting out the cold half-light that outlined her features. "Do you choose to stay?" she whispered. "And not leave me to my death? You can still go. I have accepted this long before."  
  
For answer, Kenshin raised his sword in salute. The girl shuddered and then laid a hand hesitantly on his right arm.  
  
"Please... understand, Himura-san... I will explain... if I survive." The words faltered as they came out of her mouth, and her voice, already whisper-soft, broke.  
  
"You will." The answer seemed to be drawn out of a deep, hidden well of anguish and suffering deep within the man's heart, like the last secret drops of blood from the heart of a dragon. Kenshin brought his sakabatou up and moved in front of her in a defensive stance, resolve in his violet eyes and his mouth set in a grim line. The demon's red eyes suddenly flared.  
  
"Do you wish to die as well, Battousai?" he rasped. "Stay to defend her, and you will most assuredly never see the light of day... or the face of your beloved... again."  
  
Kaoru! His mouth went dry as the implications of the threat burned into his mind. With Sanosuke gone back to Tsunan's place to talk with him, she and Yahiko were very vulnerable to attack. What if...  
  
A light touch on his back brought him back to the strange unreality of this plain. "You don't know her heart, Himura-san." Mikomi's face was very pale, but determination lent strength to her lavender eyes. "She is strong enough."  
  
And somehow those words shining with painful truth and clarity were all that remained to convince him. Kaoru *was* strong. She would understand.  
  
"Then die both." The words were spoken with dreadful finality and all the non-emotion of an accepted fact. The Wraith stretched his hands out towards them, the bloodlike fire blazing around his arms.  
  
"Listen to me, Himura-san," Mikomi murmured from behind him, her voice like steel, honed to an intense cutting edge. He had never heard her speak like that, though he long knew there was something more to her lavender eyes than any of them saw, as steel is hidden in the petals of a flower to pierce in deadly beauty.  
  
"The Wraith is a demon. He has transported us here, to this reality -- something he created out of his own twisted mind -- so that he will be able to kill me quietly. Or, as he says, so that my death may not be ordinary." Her breath caught in her throat as the fire intensified and she felt its heat. "You will only be able to go back to the real world... and to Kaoru-chan... if he is destroyed."  
  
Red hair shaded narrowed, glinting eyes as Kenshin nodded in assent. He could feel the girl tense behind him and hear the soft rustle of her dark yukata against her limbs. Something seemed to pass between Mikomi and the demon standing in front of them, and the girl made an obscure gesture as the fire around the Wraith's hands flickered into glowing, dancing tendrils.  
  
"As it is..."  
  
Mikomi hesitated, for a moment, before replying to the demon's words, "So be it."  
  
And then the Wraith struck.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
"Kenshin..." An almost-whimper. "Mikomi-chan..."  
  
Kaoru drew her arms around herself, feeling that in the span of the few moments from Kenshin and Mikomi's disappearance the air had grown suddenly, unbearably, cold. She had been feeling an uneasiness, a coldness in her heart, ever since the time she had seen Kenshin changed by the shadow over the moon, and she knew instinctively that this night was the vertex of all the omens that something was terribly, horribly wrong. For since that night -- whose memory she couldn't erase no matter how hard she tried -- a question had been echoing in her head, a question that had to do with Kenshin and the past and strange shadows and darkness.  
  
This night the question would be answered.  
  
And yet... and yet... she feared what the answer to the question would be. He had suffered enough bearing the curse and the burden of the hitokiri; what more if there was something else? Something worse?  
  
Even more importantly, where had he and Mikomi gone when they vanished with that strange dark figure? What was happening to them? Were they safe... or even alive? Kaoru shook her head, biting her lip. They were. They had to be! (Kami-sama, keep them safe. Protect them from whatever it is they're facing.)  
  
If they weren't... oh, if they weren't... The helplessness and agony of not-knowing, the pain of being left to imagine what had happened to her two friends, the despair of being left behind once again tore her up inside. She clenched her hands into fists at her side, trying to put all those thoughts out of her mind and instead focusing on what she had to do. Perhaps there was some way she could help them, even if it was only to be strong and stand against all the emotions raging inside her and trying to weaken her to the point of collapse.  
  
"Hey busu."  
  
The young woman whirled, her face paling and then coloring as she saw a sleepy-eyed Yahiko standing behind her. "Yahiko-*chan*! Don't scare me like that!"  
  
Yahiko opened his mouth to retort, then snapped it shut when he saw the expression on her face and the fear clouding her blue eyes. "I heard noises," he said uncomfortably, "and I thought something'd happened."  
  
(Something did! Something happened!) Kaoru wanted to scream, and instead leaned limply against the wall, feeling her strength drain from her. (Kenshin and Mikomi are gone, and I don't know where they are. Or even if they're still in this world... even if they're still alive... and all this is driving me insane! But how can I tell you anything like that?)  
  
That action combined with the unusual pallor and the almost-despair in Kaoru's eyes, making her look so different from the radiant, vividly alive girl of everyday, made Yahiko add with unusual concern in his voice, "what's wrong?"  
  
Resisting the temptation to say 'nothing,' and order him to go back to sleep -- for he was just a child, as a tiny voice in her mind reminded her -- Kaoru looked at the boy and tried to think of a reply as she drew her thoughts into coherence. No, no, she couldn't dismiss him as a child, and the tiny voice was drowned out by a chorus of other voices. She could still remember the resentment she felt when Kenshin would hide things from her in an effort to shield her from himself, and the wish of her heart that he wouldn't. That he would tell her the truth... as she should now. As Kaoru looked at the young, serious face before her, shadowed and more mature in the shadows of the night, she knew that Yahiko was a child no longer. He had a right to know what was happening. She wouldn't -- couldn't -- deny him that.  
  
"Kenshin and Mikomi-chan..." she tried to go on, but the words stuck in her throat. Kaoru sucked in the cold, cold air and tried again. "They're gone." Bitter, hot tears stung her eyes, but she made no effort to wipe them away, finding comfort in the liquid heat that broke up the knife-sharp cold of the night.   
  
Yahiko drew closer. "Hey, close your yukata," he reminded her unabashedly. Then his tone changed from that of insult to genuine worry. "What really happened?"  
  
His words, and the tone they were said in, suddenly make her feel like it was she who was the child and he the adult. Kaoru absently drew her yukata tighter and tied it closed, feeling too numb with the cold of the night and the intensity of her emotions to blush. "Kenshin... he... he..." She buried her face in her hands, and after that though her words were muffled, they had been marshaled into some semblance of order.  
  
"I heard Mikomi scream," she began shakily. "When I came here a dark *thing* was holding her by the throat," a choked sob of sympathy for her friend's pain, "and it dragged her... somewhere when Kenshin started attacking it. Then they disappeared." The wave of frustration at being left behind to endure the agony of waiting almost swamped her self-control under. "No, Yahiko, I don't know what's happening!"  
  
"Kami-sama."  
  
"I know," she said miserably in answer to the bewildered, disbelieving worry of that single exclamation. "I don't have any idea what's happened to them. It's eating me up inside." And more tears trickled out from between her hands to splash on the floor, liquid yet diamond-hard and very, very real.  
  
"Why'd anyone want to go after Mikomi? What's happening anyway?"  
  
Kaoru raised her face, cheeks streaked by tears and eyes shining with the brilliance of pain. "I don't know," she admitted. "Still... oh, this is even worse than all of those other times. I get the feeling we're dealing with... the supernatural here, pure evil. I don't know if I'll believe what I'm seeing -- I don't even know if I want to believe! Because all this... what it's about... *I don't even know*!"  
  
"Kenshin doesn't, either."  
  
It was easy to forget that Yahiko was unusually perceptive for his age until he surprised one with a statement like this. It was easy to dismiss him as an impudent little boy until he showed just how mature he truly was. Kaoru licked her lips nervously, afraid for Kenshin, afraid that the trouble in his eyes and the nightmare of his past had-- "Oh, do you think he's... do you think he and Mikomi-chan are still..." she stopped. "He will be strong enough. He *will* survive this." She murmured it over and over again, a chant against the fear and unfamiliar, ominous darkness.  
  
"Kaoru?" His voice was suddenly very, very soft and whisper-thin, but the maturity was still there in the courage to admit his fear. "I'm scared."  
  
The young woman shivered. "Yes." She placed a reassuring arm around his shoulders and drew him to her. Yahiko didn't resist and buried his face in her shoulder, his shoulders heaving and body racked by sobs. "I am too."  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
Whiplike bursts of fire, hissing softly, blossomed from the demon's flaming hands and converged on them. Kenshin easily jumped clear and risked a quick glance at the girl. Despite the yukata she wore she, too, had evaded the whips of fire and now crouched on the ground, panting. "They aren't like real whips," she cried. "Behind--"  
  
He felt several pinpoints of heat behind him and twisted to the side just in time. The fire he had dodged had somehow doubled back and now pursued him, undulating snake-like through the air. Taking a deep breath, he let the instincts he had learned so well take over, putting all but the twisting flames out of his mind.  
  
Cloth brushed against his face, and he glanced up from the crouch he had landed in just   
as Mikomi, dark hair flying, somersaulted over him with several streams of fire in pursuit. She looked over at him as she landed, nodded in acknowledgement, and launched herself off the ground once more as Kenshin leaped to her side.  
  
Now as they twisted and turned side by side while the Wraith smirked in the background the whips of fire intertwined with each other, all moving in a terrifyingly beautiful dance of motion, of hissing snakes and burning fangs, of all-conquering death. Kenshin could feel the sweat standing out on his forehead and the heat growing unbearably stronger to that of eternal hatred; could see Mikomi, a shade slower, weakening, and he found himself wondering how long he could still...  
  
Suddenly Mikomi cried out, and Kenshin became agonizingly aware of the acrid smell of burnt flesh when he saw the burns on her arm and her back. He was not surprised when her eyes hardened, decision replacing pain.  
  
The next time Mikomi landed from another somersault, streams of fire crashing into the ground behind her, she came to her feet only inches from the Wraith. Kenshin's eyes narrowed and he blurred towards her with his sakabatou at the ready, but the demon shot out a flame-marked hand and took hold of her yukata's front a moment before he reached her.  
  
Mikomi brought her right arm up in a seemingly futile gesture, her hand clutched around something. "Tessen!" she screamed.  
  
Kenshin's eyes suddenly widened in disbelief. Mikomi's fingers loosened around whatever she held, and just as he recognized the star-shaped jewel it came alive with white fire, momentarily blinding him and consuming the remaining whips of flame. When the fire died down the girl held a steel fan in her hands, and she instantly slashed at the demon with its blades. The Wraith's eyes widened, the clawed fingers letting the yukata go.  
  
She dropped to the ground, gasping. Kenshin had taken the chance when it presented itself and followed up her attack, striking the Wraith with the sakaba's blunt edge. "He's not human," she murmured from behind him. "Use the sharp side."  
  
The swordsman attacked again, timing the skillful strokes with the controlled sweeps of the tessen in Mikomi's hand. The darkness that shrouded the demon grew tattered and seemed to grow fainter, though in the strange unreal gray that seemed to shadow and light up the plain at the same time he couldn't be certain. In this... reality he couldn't be certain of anything, not while he was fighting a demon with a girl who seemed to possess all the skill of a warrior who had survived enough suffering for a thousand lifetimes and who held a weapon as unearthly as the demon's fire itself.  
  
"Katana," came the hurried whisper from beside him, and the tessen blurred into a sword, its steel glinting in the half-light. The demon made a growling sound deep in his throat when he saw the weapon, and stopped his grudging, step by step retreat.  
  
"It is time to end this," the Wraith bit out, crossing his hands in front of him defensively. The shadowy tatters solidified, growing darker and molding themselves around the demon's body. The shining blades plunged into the darkness, again and again, but unlike before... nothing happened.  
  
Mikomi drew a hissing breath. "No..." She tried to rush forward again, but found herself frozen in place, her feet rooted to the ground. Looking at Kenshin she saw the sudden widening of his eyes as he struggled to move his feet, and the hissing breath became the dangerous whisper of controlled fury. "Wraith!"  
  
The Wraith laughed, mockingly, savoring the fear that suddenly surfaced in the girl's eyes. "Give it up, Lady Hoshino," he said, and took a step forward, supernatural fire suddenly appearing in his hands. "The only way for you and the Battousai to survive is through your refused inheritance -- the Keeper's power."  
  
The sudden confusion and almost-accusing question in Kenshin's violet eyes were almost tangible, searing through in their exchanged looks, and the doubt and guilt that had persistently clawed at Mikomi finally stabbed her heart, cutting through its defenses, the reasons of necessity and lack of choice she had shielded herself with. Why did she have to involve him in this? He didn't know anything!  
  
"Ah," the demon paused, for a moment, to look at her with his piercing red eyes. "Have you been so cowardly that you have hid all that you are from him, Lady Hoshino? Does he not even know who you truly are?"  
  
The girl was silent, though as she looked at Kenshin there was a silent cry for understanding -- the emotion of a helpless creature trapped in the snare called destiny -- in her lavender eyes. Kenshin was staring at the demon, and in the light of the fire it seemed that he was a hitokiri again with the flame of his soul burning from within and through his eyes in gold, indescribable emotion written on his face with a pen of confusion and dread and pain.  
  
"Battousai." The fire around the Wraith's arms stopped moving, as if it had been frozen into a sheet of molten gold streaked with human blood. "Do you have any idea of who this girl really is? Do you not know how much danger she has brought to you and to yours?"  
  
The involuntary sob did not escape Kenshin's attention. "I trust Mikomi-dono," he finally replied, "I know that she wouldn't have done anything to endanger us if it wasn't necessary... Whoever she is," and his eyes narrowed as he brought the sakaba up once more, its cutting edge glinting with a reflection of the bloodlike fire, "she is my friend, and I am not going to let her die. Not like this." The Wraith's eyes gleamed with malevolent amusement and Kenshin heard another cry, cut off almost as soon as it escaped Mikomi's lips. And he suddenly knew that he was going to die.  
  
"Arigatou..." Mikomi murmured, closing her eyes as the fire started moving again and rushed towards them in a searing wave of certain death. "Kenshin... arigatou."  
  
Kenshin brought his sword up and extended it in front of her, leaving himself open to the fire's attack. If he was to die, let it be in a place like this, protecting someone else and somehow paying back the debt of blood the hitokiri owed. In acceptance of the inevitable. Yet... let Kaoru understand. Let her be happy without him. "Sayonara..."  
  
The fire licked hungrily at the edge of his hakama. It would not be long until...  
  
And then Mikomi somehow broke free of the demon's grip and leaped in front of him.  
  
White light flared into existence around the girl, and Kenshin saw, with the same eyes through which he read his opponents' emotion and perceived their battle auras, the power in her that had lain hidden before but now shone forth with the glorious strength of a thousand suns. "It won't end this way," she said quietly. "This is my death. Not anyone else's." The girl made a gesture with the jewel in her hand. "As the heir of Hoshino I assume all the power that is the Keeper's..." her voice rose above the hissing crackle of the flames, "Starlight, hellfire... by the legacy of my blood and the Keeper's right I summon you!"  
  
The light around Mikomi grew stronger and pushed out until it covered both of them, driving back the demon's fire. Mikomi held out her hands, and the light suddenly swirled into the shape of dazzling flames, strangely cool and brushing with a multitude of tiny wispy fingers against Kenshin's skin. "Go!" she cried. The girl's eyes narrowed in dreadful concentration, then shrank to slits as power surged through her and towards the demon in the form of intense white overwhelming everything in its way, the pure brilliance of the stars and the irresistible might of hellfire united. It extinguished first the bloodfire...  
  
...then the Wraith himself.  
  
A wail of defeat and frustration burst from the demon's disembodied lips. "Damn... you...!"  
  
"You wanted the Keeper, Wraith?" she said, her voice restrained with the self-control that clamps like an iron vise around extreme emotions and binds shattered minds together. "I am the Keeper now, as I have been forced to become. You have nothing to blame for this but yourself."  
  
The last remaining shadows that surrounded the Wraith grew tattered and faded into the grey light.  
  
The silence that followed the demon's disappearance was broken only by the choked gasps that escaped Mikomi's throat. Her lavender eyes were wide open, the expression in them terrible in the sheer amount of agony and helplessness it signified.  
  
The look in those eyes struck something deep within Kenshin. "Mikomi-dono..."  
  
But Mikomi didn't pay any attention to him or anything else. As the glow of the Keeper's power died down around her and the inhuman resolve in her face disappeared, the girl fell to her knees and wept.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
Keeper...  
  
"Mikomi-dono."  
  
Keeper...  
  
Mikomi bit her lip to keep from screaming as she felt the power rush through her veins like quicksilver, deadly and uncontrollable. So her hand had been forced at last. She had finally made the choice to become the Keeper despite the fact that every fiber of her being cried out against it.  
  
Keeper...  
  
If she had time to spare, if she could stem the torrent of events and emotions, she could perhaps go on weeping and distilling the agony she felt into tears and cries of frustration and anger and rage. Yet she didn't. The acceptance of the power was done. Now she truly *was* the Keeper, and she could do nothing about it. Not anymore.  
  
(Helplessness... the story of my life.)  
  
"Mikomi-dono!" A hand shook her shoulder. "Daijoubu?"  
  
She tried to keep herself from shuddering at the touch of that hand and looked up. Kenshin's face was a study in conflict, worry for her and almost suspicious questioning warring for supremacy in his face. (Himura-san...)  
  
The questioning won out over the worry, and Mikomi steeled herself for the rush of questions that would inevitably follow.  
  
None came.  
  
Only a silence that poured like healing balm over her, giving her precious time to gather her thoughts and quiet any shrieking protests against the choice she had been forced to make. A silence that, though she could sense no understanding in it, was nevertheless born of pity. Mikomi wished the silence would last forever, that she would not have to explain.  
  
"Himura-san..." It was an effort even to speak, and the word seemed to sink claws in her throat as it was dragged out. "I... forgive me for drawing you into this."  
  
"There's nothing to forgive." Kenshin paused, remembering the wound in his own heart, how the ache had taken years to heal. "And you don't have to tell me anything."  
  
"Iie, iie." She shook her head. "You were willing to trust me in spite of everything... you almost died because of me. You should know the truth. I owe you that much, Himura-san." The diamond in her hand suddenly felt very heavy, and pulling back her hair in a half-ponytail, she clasped the jewel around it. "But... do not say anything before I finish, onegai."  
  
Kenshin bowed and sat down on the ground beside her. "I understand."  
  
Her hands shaking, Mikomi wiped the tears from her eyes. "Do you?" A bitter smile full of so much pain Kenshin felt a chill running up and down his spine. She touched a hand to the hollow of her throat, murmured a prayer, and began.  
  
"When this land was created it was not separate from the world of the demons. Beings of the world of mortal and that of demons could travel freely between the two worlds. Because the two worlds are so different, after some time there was so much chaos both were in danger of collapse. In the end the gods decided to create something that would let only a few chosen beings pass from their world to the other. Thus they created the Mortals' Gate."  
  
The tone of Mikomi's voice was completely dead, and Kenshin had the uneasy feeling that, if the iron grip around her emotions loosened even just slightly, she would shriek her pain to the sky , neither day or night, that hung above them like a colorless pall. "To safeguard this gate, for the demons *would* try to destroy the barrier, a Keeper was appointed. The Keeper of Mortals' Gate."  
  
A strangled exclamation of "You..." slipped from Kenshin's mouth before he could stop it.  
  
Mikomi inclined her head in acknowledgment, but when she spoke again it was only to take up the dropped thread of the story. "This Keeper was given supernatural power, which was passed throughout his family for generations until the family died out and it came to another. Centuries passed and finally the duty of the Keeper, with his power, came to our family.  
  
"The line of Hoshino has had its strengths and weaknesses, all of which are... unnatural to ordinary man. When steel wounds a Hoshino, the blood will not stop flowing until the wound is properly treated. Several of my ancestors have died from the merest scratch." The memory of the day he first saw her, as vivid now as it was then, rushed back to Kenshin. He looked at her wonderingly, a half-formed question in his mind, and found that question answered moments later.  
  
"I knew the risks when I set out, Himura-san... and yes, I would have died if it had not been for you or Megumi-san." For a moment the self-control wavered and she almost sobbed, but with a quick intake of breath she recovered and continued her tale. "The Hoshinos were also given control of the mind, control that lets one see into the thoughts of others and... manipulate minds."  
  
(So it *was* you! The blow to my mind, those words, the pain of the wound I felt on that day... it was all you!)  
  
His violet eyes met hers, and the lavender darkened. "Yes. It was." Mikomi swallowed nervously. "But, Himura-san, I couldn't really be sure I could trust you, not after what happened when I was a child."  
  
The truth had to come out in the end. Both of them knew that and dreaded it; Kenshin, its meaning and what it would tell him about the hitokiri's past... Mikomi, the revelation that would hurt even more than the wounding touch of steel.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
The silence of the streets at night was eerie, almost overwhelming. Megumi shivered as she slipped out of the clinic, a dark mantle draped around her patternless kimono, and wondered what on earth she was doing out on the street on the way to the Kamiya dojo.  
  
Then the urgency of the situation hit her like a bucket of ice-cold water, and Megumi found herself running to the dojo, searching with her mind for the all-too familiar sense of Sanosuke's presence. She was slightly relieved -- and more than slightly irritated with herself -- when she unexpectedly found him in a few seconds. [Oi! Roosterhead!] she screamed at his mind.  
  
[K'so!] Sano was definitely not asleep, but he was definitely not sober either. [What the--]  
  
[It's Megumi, you dimwit.]  
  
[Fox?] A confused pause. [How come I can hear you? What are you doing in my mind?]  
  
Megumi stopped, panting, at the gate of the dojo. [Never mind that. This is important. You *must* go to to the dojo.]  
  
[C'mon, kitsune-onna... we're in the middle of a card game here. Plus it's the middle of the night, for crying out loud! What're you doing awake?]  
  
[Damn, Sano!] It was the most intense mindspeech she had expressed for a long time. [Do you want to get Kaoru and Yahiko killed?!]  
  
Even though her mind was not linked to his -- or was it? and she shook herself again for letting her reflections wander like that -- Megumi could feel the shock that rippled through Sanosuke, and when his thought answered hers it was completely sober. [What's going on?]  
  
[I wish I knew... Now, Sano!] she snapped. She leaned against the gatepost, exhausted, and started when a familiar tall figure appeared at the end of the street. "What are you *doing* here?"  
  
"You told me it was important, so I ran from Tsunan's place to here." As Sanosuke drew closer she could see the faint sheen of sweat that outlined his features and the well-defined muscles of his bare chest. He noticed her level gaze and the glint in her golden brown eyes as she looked at him, and he glanced down at his clothes... then swore. "Chikusho! I even forgot my jacket!"  
  
She tried to laugh. It sounded harsh and brittle to her ears, metallic notes that dropped from her lips to shatter on the ground, and the injured expression in Sano's eyes shifted to one of concern. "Hey! Fox! What's wrong with--" The words died in his throat as Megumi slumped to the ground, her face paper-white against the darkness of her hair and her eyes half-closed.  
  
Sanosuke caught her as she fell. "Megumi! Hey..."  
  
Megumi's eyes opened slowly to look up at Sano. The horror in their mysterious, shadowed depths frightened him more than the sense of danger and evil hanging in the air for the past few days had. "Mikomi!... kami-sama..." and her eyes grew unfocused, as if she was there and not there at the same time. The man shuddered.  
  
(Mikomi? What's happening to her?! Why'd Megumi call out to her like this?)  
  
He took Megumi's limp form into his arms and ran into the dojo.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
Megumi was past hearing. Or seeing, or feeling, or sensing. She had been drawn into the   
spell of the memory woven by Mikomi's words, the web the girl had created to relive the events that had taken place in the era ruled by blood and the law of the sword. The relief and thankfulness she felt when her mind touched Mikomi's again and she was reassured that she and Kenshin were still alive was negated by the mental anguish that followed.  
  
Vaguely she could sense Mikomi murmuring to Kenshin, "Do you still remember? Has the shadow taken even that knowledge from you?" and placing her hands on Kenshin's temples.  
  
Images flooded her mind, the images Mikomi was stirring into life in Kenshin's mind as she rekindled the warming, the searing fire of memory.  
  
After a few questioning moments Megumi realized that she was looking through the eyes of another person, not Mikomi, with his mind dominated by darkness and sorrow. Memories not her own flooded into her mind, the remembrances of a killer, and she cried out.  
  
"Mikomi!... kami-sama..."  
  
The memory, the thoughts, the moment, reached out for her. She hesitated, then gave in to it. If she could find the answer to the questions through this... if she could just understand!  
  
...  
  
Snow. Blood. Death. And fragrance, sadly sweet.  
  
The scent of white plum blossoms united with that of blood grew stronger, and he felt the katana in his hands grow impossibly heavy. A tortured cry. "Tomoe..."  
  
...  
  
The web of memory unravelled for a moment to show her the tears trickling from Kenshin's cheeks. Kenshin turned away and tried to remove Mikomi's hands from the sides of his head, but the grip of the girl's slender fingers was too strong for his shaking hands. "No. You *must* remember."  
  
She was plunged into the vision, if that was what it was, again.  
  
...  
  
The ache of loneliness and sorrow in his heart was eclipsed by the guilt that threatened to tear him apart as he watched the flames of the funeral pyre rise to the leaden and uncaring sky. He made several efforts to turn.  
  
An eternity of pain passed, then he slowly placed one foot in front of the other, crushing the snow beneath the wood of the sandals.  
  
The first step was always the hardest.  
  
The most painful.  
  
...  
  
Megumi heard a voice calling her and a touch on her cheek. She struggled to open her eyes. "What--?"  
  
Kaoru's concerned voice drew her out of her daze. "Megumi! Wake up!"  
  
"I can't. I mustn't. Ken-san and Mikomi-san..." Feeling very annoyed, she asked herself, (Why do I sound so confused? So afraid? Megumi! Get hold of yourself!) She could hear other voices in the room though she could not see the speakers; Sanosuke, cursing more out of fear than anger -- "Whaddaya mean-- K'so! I *knew* something was wrong, but *this*! I don't believe it, I *can't*--" and Yahiko answering him, his voice uncharacteristically low. Megumi didn't bother trying to make out the indistinct, muttered words.  
  
Hope surged violently into Kaoru's voice. "They're still alive?"  
  
The doctor nodded weakly and sat up. "I think the enemy -- whatever it was -- is gone now."  
  
"How do you know?" A hand helped her sit up, and she nodded her thanks to Sanosuke. This was no time for the jokes and insults of everyday.  
  
"I can't explain right now." The vision was pulling her into it once more, and she barely had enough time to say what Mikomi had asked her to. "It will be all right, Kaoru. It will be all right." Somehow the words sounded hollow to her ears, and she wished with all her heart that they were true.  
  
...  
  
The black envelope.  
  
He turned it over in his hands, feeling reluctant to open it. Another man would die tonight; maybe even a whole family. This piece of paper held the judgment on a human life. Battousai wondered if he would be able to put the memory aside, at least during daytime; it was during the night that the bloodied spirits of those he had killed came back to haunt him. For during the night he wasn't Battousai, not fully... there was something in the darkness, in the lack of sight, that let him be truthful with -- and to -- himself. Sometimes he dreaded the truth of the night even more than the lies of the day.  
  
Paper fell in black shreds to the ground as he tore the envelope open and read the message inside aloud.  
  
"The Hoshino family. Destroy all members of the family, including the children, as even this family's name is dangerous to the Ishin Shishi and its principles. Directions to the Hoshinos' location are at the back."  
  
It was as if he had just pronounced a judgment over the lives of people he didn't, and would never, know. He stared at the message again, not reading the words but just looking at the characters and lines the ink made on the paper.  
  
Abstractedly he thought that though the order was written in ordinary black ink, it might as well have been written in blood. The blood of those who were already dead, though they didn't know it yet and would still continue to breathe and go about life for the few hours it would take him to reach them.  
  
He crumpled the paper in his hands after studying the map and reached for his katana, already shielding his mind with the coldblooded efficiency that was the hitokiri's way of thinking.  
  
A few hours. That was all that remained to the Hoshinos. For their sake, he hoped they used the time they had left well.  
  
...  
  
"But it wasn't real, don't you see? Himura-san, it wasn't real!"  
  
Megumi almost wept for Kenshin's and Mikomi's pain. "I... the Battousai was ordered to do that? My superiors..."  
  
"Iie, iie. It was the shadow."  
  
A single tormented question. "Why?"  
  
"The darkness chose you as its instrument, long before you were born. It thought you would become what it wanted you to be by killing, and it tricked you."  
  
"Into believing that order?"  
  
"Yes. But what happened next *was* real." Finally, an anguished sob that escaped her rigid self-control. "Very, very real."  
  
...  
  
The bamboo door was shredded by one slash of the katana. Battousai stepped in and looked around at the family sitting at dinner around the low table in the middle of the room. Strangely, they didn't look surprised, and one of them, a woman, instantly blew out the only lamp in the room. Tendrils of smoke drifted off like phantom hands, clawing and grasping, into the sudden darkness.  
  
"We have been expecting you," a man, most probably the father, remarked quietly.  
  
A voice not his own replied. "Oh?"  
  
"Of course," the woman sitting at the right of the man who had spoken said. Her voice was deep for a woman's, and though it was soft there was no mistaking the underlying strength that wove like a cord of steel through its other, gentler overtones. "The doings of the shadow have been no secret to us."  
  
"If that is so, you will know why I have come."  
  
Another, older woman, her face lined by care and the pure white of her hair contrasting oddly with the eternal youth in her clear blue eyes, lifted her chin as she said, "You are mistaken if you believe that the line of the Keepers will die so easily."  
  
Battousai shook free of the almost hypnotic spell of her words, instantly forgetting the conversation that had taken place, the shadowy presence that had spoken through him, and putting all but his assignment out of his mind. The katana's steel glinted in the moonlight that had entered the shattered door, as he raised the sword, and the people drew back, their faces suddenly bewildered. "He doesn't know," the older woman gasped. "Kami-sama, protect us." The man tried to run out of the room with a child in his arms.  
  
The man died first. It was surprisingly simple to kill him; a single effortless slash that caught him through the heart and he slumped to the ground, his blood pooling around him in dark liquid death. As Battousai started towards the two women, thinking distastefully that he hated killing women -- their screams haunted him, helpless and vulnerable, and there was something in him that revolted at the idea of killing defenseless women, something that was not so easily pushed aside by the knowledge of his duties' significance -- and that it was strange that the man should bleed so profusely and so quickly from a simple cut. Behind him he heard a terrified girl's sob and panicked footsteps.  
  
"Demon!" the younger woman spat as he loomed over her.  
  
The older woman was chanting to herself as she bowed over a small object cupped in her two hands. "Starlight, hellfire... The mark of blood will never fade... Let the eyes tell the story and bear the mark. Lavender for gray, blood for life--"  
  
The chant was cut short by the katana's stroke. He killed her so that she would die instantly; he owed her that much, he thought. Bravery did not deserve a cruel death. The younger woman did not bother to scream when she saw the other die. Instead, she took the object from the dead woman's hands and threw it, glistening in the random beams of moonlight as it flew, to where the body of the man lay. She died a second after and sighed a sigh in which triumph and despair were curiously mingled before falling lifeless over the body of her companion.  
  
Leaving the two bodies behind him, he started for the child.  
  
Revulsion at having to kill a child, a wave of almost physical rebellion, slammed into him. He did not want to -- *could* not -- kill a child, not this way, not like this. Not this child, who seemed to have inherited all the courage of her mother and now stood against the wall looking up at him with her gray eyes unafraid. No. No. He would let the child live, go back to headquarters and report his mission as completed. Drops of blood spattered onto the floor as he flicked his katana then sheathed it.  
  
He turned to go.  
  
Inexplicably he found his feet rooted to the ground and an unbearable need screaming in his mind. He had to kill the girl. He had to, he had to!, a voice screamed at him, its sense of presence identical to the shadow he had felt a while ago. He had to! and his hand went to the katana's hilt once more. Steel rasped as he drew it out of the saya.  
  
And with that overpowering command and almost-desperate need to see the last of Hoshinos destroyed crying throughout his mind, sweeping all other thoughts away in a great fiery wave of revenge and hatred and darkness all not his own, the hitokiri raised his sword in salute and stabbed it into the girl's throat. She cried out as she fell, a cry that died in a gurgling gasp as blood stained the pallor of her skin. Even then she was looking up at him, the object her mother had thrown -- a jewel, he saw now -- in the grip of her nerveless fingers.  
  
It might have been a trick of the light, or the veil that falls over people's eyes as they cross over to death, but it seemed to him as she fell that the misty gray of her eyes was eclipsed by vivid lavender. Reflected as he was in that wide-eyed, accusing lavender gaze he saw himself as he really was, not a golden-eyed hitokiri who was obeying his masters' orders but a man with pupilless violet eyes controlled -- no, deceived -- by a powerful, dark evil from another world.  
  
He ran from the house that now smelled of death, ran to escape from the memory of those lavender eyes and the brilliance of the gem in the child's hand, ran to drive away the evil that held him in its clawed grasp.  
  
And as he ran he felt the shadowy presence in his mind disappear, taking the memory of what had happened with it. He leaned against a tree in the forest that surrounded the house and fell asleep.  
  
When he woke he would forget all about it. All about them, all about her.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
Kenshin opened his eyes and saw Mikomi's lavender eyes gazing at him sorrowfully. Those eyes... those eyes... they haunted him even more now, for he knew from what abyss they had arisen to overcome death and the past in bringing back memory.  
  
There was only one thing he could do, now that he knew. Kenshin drew his sakaba and offered it to her, holding it carefully balanced between his two palms. "You may have your revenge now," he said, his voice hoarse in the pain of discovery and regret and newly-awakened guilt.  
  
Mikomi's eyes were bright with unshed tears as she stared at the sword before her and shook her head. "Do you really think that I came to you only for revenge?" asked she, softly, answering the plea in his tormented violet eyes with a question of her own. "Revenge is an empty thing, Himura-san, and it more often wounds he who tries to use it than he for whom it is intended."  
  
"But it was I who did that -- not the Battousai. I." Even the protection of the Battousai and his duty was gone now. As Kenshin released the sword it fell to the ground with the ring of steel against stone, a sound that echoed through the colorless reality that now vibrated with ache answering ache, wound answering wound: the agony of the killer and the sorrow of his victim.  
  
"Iie. It was the shadow; you were only the tool it used."  
  
Kenshin wondered how she could still speak, until he realized that pain had so completely claimed her that she could no longer express the suffering that even now tore at her with its poison-tipped nails. "Forgive me."  
  
Mikomi shook her head again, gently. "There's nothing to forgive. You had no choice. None of us did." Hesitantly, she took Kenshin's hands -- hands with fingers spread wide apart at which disbelieving violet eyes were staring in horror of what they had done -- into her own. "Please try to understand that." Hot tears, shining in the half-light, trickled down her cheek to splash onto her hands that held Kenshin's in a gesture meant to keep him from doing anything to himself, from further blaming the choices he had made decades ago.  
  
(Mikomi-dono... you don't have to shift the blame to anyone else. I know who I am. I killed your family. I killed *you*.)  
  
"You didn't kill me, Himura-san. Not as you thought; I was saved. I survived, to live through my childhood in sorrow and hate of he who had done this thing to my family and left me the sole survivor of the Hoshinos." She sighed, wiped the tears from her eyes. "But even though your katana deprived me of all that, even though I was consumed by revenge for so long, I finally learned to forgive. I forgave you long ago, when the one who took care of me died to the evil and I learned of what fate had done to you. I forgave you when I set out to find you, and again when you saved me from death."  
  
He thought of the way fear would come into her eyes whenever their gaze rested upon him, and how she shuddered when they came into contact. Even while they were fighting the Wraith she had seemed, sometimes, to be more afraid of him than of the demon. "The wounds that... night left haven't fully healed, yet." She traced the scar on his cheek, dark in the union of day and night of this reality, with her gaze. "There are still scars."  
  
"Yet you became the Keeper just so we... I... would not die. Mikomi-dono..."  
  
The lavender eyes closed again, streaming tears, and Mikomi's hands shook convulsively as she released Kenshin's hands to clutch at the diamond in her hair. "What's done is done. I don't regret assuming my duty, for it means that you are still alive. And as long as you are still alive there is hope yet."  
  
[Himura-san, please don't blame yourself for what happened. Don't. Everything that happened had to; I can see that now, and you had as much choice in it as I did. None.] Her voice in his mind sharpened to a single pinpoint of focused, intense emotion. [You *can't* let your own guilt take over now! You just can't! What's happening is too important for that!]  
  
Those few sentences shimmered into existence as shining bonds of lucidity around the swirling dark shadows of guilt in his mind, controlling the darkness that threatened to shatter all that he was. "I came here for a purpose," she continued out loud. Her voice was not steady, its tones overlaid with the plaintive music of sorrow, but there was strength in it -- the same strength that once shone through the child's gray eyes and now burned in the lavender eyes of the woman. "The darkness is coming. You know that."  
  
Slowly he brought his mind back to the imminent danger her words hinted at. Mikomi was right; he couldn't give in to his emotions, not now. Not now. "Hai." The word took a long time to come, but when it did it was devoid of any distracting emotion.  
  
"Because there has been no Keeper for more than ten years," a pause, "the Gate has stood unprotected from the demons of the other world. Right now it is near collapse. The Wraith was able to enter this world through a momentary gap through it... and as it grows weaker more demons like the Wraith will be able to pass through it. Until, finally, it gives way and opens the connection between this world and the world of demons again."  
  
Kenshin nodded. (What next?) he asked silently, wondering if his spirit could still endure more revelations like this, more pain, more guilt.  
  
"I am the Keeper. I *will* destroy the Gate," said with a quiet determination that was a thousand times more frightening than emotion.  
  
"What will that do to this world?" Kenshin asked, after an eternal pause. He tried to keep the shock from showing on his face and would have succeeded, if not for the slight widening of his violet eyes.  
  
"Both worlds will become completely separate. Forever." She held out her hands, and a faint glow appeared around them. "The darkness, the evil, the demons, will try to stop me, and to do that they will try to make you surrender to the shadow. If I had not come you would have no choice but give in. You felt it, didn't you? You just didn't understand. Or know."  
  
Cold stabbed at his heart. "I... felt it before, but it was only tonight that I knew." (She will be throwing her life if she does that; I can't, won't, let her die. For even though she has forgiven me, even though the whole world may forgive me, I still can't forgive myself for all that I have done. Forgiveness is a thing too precious for one such as I.) "Mikomi-dono--" Whatever he was to say broke off into a strangled gasp when he saw what was happening to her hands.  
  
The glow around Mikomi's hands had been intensifying while they spoke, and just as it became dazzling, blinding light it died down abruptly to reveal an unsheathed sword resting on her hands in the same position as Kenshin's sakabatou had been only a few moments ago. Mikomi lowered her hands and let the sword slide to the ground, wincing as the steel pressed against the skin of her palms. "But now you have a second choice. You don't have to surrender to the shadow; you can choose to fight against it. With this."  
  
"I will fight. I must." He reached out to take the sword, but Mikomi stopped him with a raised hand.  
  
"Do not decide until you have thought of those whose fates will be guided by your choice, Himura-san." A bitter smile. "If you choose the darkness it will leave Kaoru-chan and the others untouched, yet you will be forever lost to them; if you choose to fight, it will assume that all those whom you love and are sworn to protect are also its enemies." (Once,) she thought, (once it wasn't like this. Once he might have chosen *not* to choose. After that, when he decided to fight the Juppon Gatana there was still a third choice, a way out. Now the third choice is gone, and if he does not choose soon the darkness will decide for him.)  
  
The voice of agony -- torturing, accusing, whispering all the fears and doubts he had pushed aside, stirring all the forgotten memories of the hitokiri into life -- rose to a crescendo, his soul writhing violently under its mastery. He had drawn those he loved most into danger... again, just by being who he was. "Why me?!?"  
  
Mikomi could have interpreted the question several ways. Instead she looked past the words and into the meaning that lay hidden into the heart of the true Kenshin, neither the hitokiri or the rurouni, and sighed as her mind briefly touched his pain. "The evil wants you because you *are* who you are. Himura-san... think about the choice you are to make. Your strength may be what is needed to tip the balance of power one way or the other." She stood up.  
  
"Where are you going, Mikomi-dono?" (Please, don't leave now. There is so much to explain to the others... so much to think about, and I need to understand more.)  
  
"The Gate." Her eyes came alive with unearthly power once more. "Take the sword, Himura-san."  
  
That was something he had to change, however minor it might be. "I'm just Kenshin, Mikomi-dono."  
  
"If you say so, Kenshin..." There was a ghost of an ironic smile playing around her pale lips as she said it. "The sword will know your choice when you make it." The cloth of her yukata billowed around her as Kenshin saw the power in her grow, and in a swirl of glowing dark hair and cloth Mikomi was gone. [Return,] her thought murmured to him. [Return to your world and those who await you and the answers.]  
  
After a few moments Kenshin could feel himself being pulled by an unknown force back to where he had come from. He thought he could see that reality crumbling as he left it, now that the restraint on it was gone and its maker destroyed.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
Mikomi paused as she left the Wraith's reality to remove the restraint that held it in place. That accomplished, she flickered back to the world of mortals, appearing just outside the city gates. She stood immobile for a moment as she let power flow through her, healing her wounds and quelling her exhaustion. (Finally. It begins.)  
  
The girl sent out a thread of thought, the same way Megumi had earlier, though *her* search was very much simplified by the fact that the person she was searching for had an extraordinary mind. She was sure there was not another like it in the whole city. [Oneesan!]  
  
The thought came back swiftly, though it was not unsurprised. [Mikomi? What happened? I sensed a demon a few hours ago.]  
  
[There was one who was able to pass through a weak place in the gate. *Was*.]  
  
[Your mind feels different. Have you finally accepted the Keeper's duty?]  
  
A rueful smile as Mikomi, walking stick materializing in her hand, started down a path only she knew how to follow. [You know me very well, oneesan,] another, more rueful smile, [even though it *has* been ten years.]  
  
[I don't pay that much attention to the years, Mikomi. What are they to me? But I *do* pay attention to the habits of people, and I see that you still persist in calling me sister -- despite my not being related to you at all.]  
  
[Gomen nasai, but I miss my family tonight, and if we are not related by blood we are related by that which we serve and by what we must prevent.]  
  
[So you *are* the Keeper now.]  
  
Plucking at the cloth of her yukata, Mikomi drew in an insignificant portion of her power and changed what she was wearing into a dark gi and hakama, adding a pair of sandals as she realized belatedly that she was barefoot. [Hai. I am.]  
  
[Sou... I wouldn't use the power for things like that if I were you. Remember what your mother used to say.] A pause, during which effects and consequences were weighed in the balance of the unknown person's mind, rapidly yet carefully. [What do you want me to do?]  
  
[I didn't say I was asking you to do anything. But if you want to do something for me, guide Kenshin and the others in what they must do. In case he chooses to fight the darkness. Hopefully he will.]  
  
[Hopefully.] A vibrant, golden laugh that danced amidst the stillness of the night. [Since when have you been calling the Battousai by his first name?]  
  
[Since he asked me to.]  
  
[To seek the Battousai as an ally... and the woman with many burdens yet the gift of supernatural sight -- Takani, isn't it?... You have fallen in with strange companions since I last saw you.]  
  
Mikomi looked up at the night sky and at the full moon as the clouds around it drifted away, mischief lighting up her lavender eyes. [None so strange, or worse, than someone I could mention,] she retorted teasingly.  
  
[Don't make fun of my husband, Mikomi,] warningly, though the other person laughed as she   
said it.  
  
[Why, you do it all the time, Tokio.]  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Tsuzuku! (Dearou... hopefully ^^)  



End file.
